Columnist to Sound Off--In His Own Paper : * Tabloid: The Coaster, which will be published twice a month, makes its debut in Corona del Mar today.

Some in the news business say a guy like Jim Wood has ink in his veins.

He wrote a column on and off for several years at the Newport Beach-Costa Mesa Pilot as well as for the Orange County Metropolitan.

This morning, Wood ups the ante with the debut of his own newspaper--the Coaster.

The free-circulation tabloid is scheduled to appear on the first and third Saturdays of every month in the Corona del Mar area.

Today’s edition features articles on the opening of Newport Coast Drive, a Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless and a profile of an elderly environmental activist. The Coaster’s advertisers already include the Irvine Co. and Coast Newport Properties. Wood said about 21,000 copies will be hand-delivered to residents’ homes and 3,000 more will be distributed by “Coaster kids” in local shopping centers.

“I’ll be up at 5 a.m. tomorrow morning watching everything,” Wood said Friday.

Once the president of a local real estate brokerage, Wood is probably best known to readers as a controversial columnist who claims he has taken “unique stands” on issues, such as opposing the Persian Gulf War.

Some of his lighter fare has included a column on his friendship with NBC newsman Tom Brokaw and an essay about his travels in Tibet.

When his columns were dropped from the Pilot and Metropolitan last April, he decided to create his own paper so he could continue to sound off. The Metropolitan replaced Wood after a new owner changed formats; Pilot Publisher Jim Gressinger did not return a phone call seeking comment about Wood.

“I still had this desire to write,” Wood said, adding that “after looking at writing a great American novel or a short story, I landed on this idea.”

Wood, 55, said he is using the proceeds from the 1988 sale of the Corona del Mar real estate brokerage that he owned to finance his newspaper. He did not specify the costs involved in starting the Coaster. The Coaster is facing stiff competition in the Newport Beach area, already home to the thrice-weekly Pilot; the weekly Newport News; the Metropolitan, a semimonthly business magazine, and Newport 714, a weekly lifestyle publication.

“I wish him well (but) I think it’s a challenging time to launch yet another community newspaper in a town that already has two highly competitive publications, the Pilot and the Newport News,” said Metropolitan Publisher Steve Churm. “Here comes a third horse in the race at a time when, industrywide, advertising is difficult to find.”

Wood is optimistic, pointing out that advertising space for the first two editions has been sold out. The Coaster’s first issue is 16 pages, eight of them filled with advertisements. The second issue will be 22 pages and Wood predicts the paper will eventually reach 48 pages.

Corona del Mar is “one of the most stable communities in the United States right now,” Wood said. “There is a certain degree of affluence and also a certain dynamism that hasn’t been captured (by local media). The essence of the area really hasn’t been conveyed.”

The paper is being printed at South Coast Printing in Irvine.