it was a small-town , once-weekly west virginia newspaper called the durbin call-clarion , put out by a retired lawyer named james d. hogliss , and its circulation figures had always been good because hogliss had been a fiery defender of the miners ' right to organize in the late 1940s and in the 1950s , and because his anti-establishment editorials were always filled with hellfire and brimstone missiles aimed at the government hacks at every level , from town to federal .