Three and a half years ago, Stan Sorenson, who at the time operated a small bookstore on Bacons Street in Ocean Beach, decided on a whim to start a community newspaper. It had been four years since the leftist O.B. Rag had gone out of business, and Sorenson, who had dabbled in a variety of businesses, welcomed a challenge. In close to two years he put out about twenty monthly issues of the O.B. News, a tabloid averaging about sixteen pages and containing an even mix of community news, eclectic fiction and travel pieces, and humor. In the spring of 1981 he closed down the paper, which financially had never really gotten past the break-even point.

In the early fall of that year, community activist and Ocean Beach Planning Board member Bob Burns put out one issue of his paper, the O.B. Scene, but abandoned plans to publish future issues because of a lack of time.

A month later, two planning board members, Catherine Wambach and Harry Nieusma, and one former board member, Dorette Jackson, were also bitten by the newspaper bug. They searched out a publisher, Jack Nally, and with him produced the first three issues of the O.B. Times, also a monthly tabloid. Conflicts over editorial policy and financial matters took their toll, however, and last January the three planning board veterans moved on to formulate plans for their own paper. In the meantime, Nally suffered a heart attack and sold his paper (for “a couple of thousand bucks”) to John Shultz, a part-time video engineer with the Navy who had joined the O.B. Times the previous month as an advertising director. Schultz promptly hired as managing editor Wayne Miller, who had worked with Stan Sorenson on the O.B. News.

Schultz’s first issue came out in mid-February and was followed two weeks later by the debut issue of the O-Beacon, published the breakaway planning board triumvirate. Until two months ago, both papers coexisted peacefully, they were both monthlies, varying from twelve to sixteen pages per issue, and taking in anywhere from $900 to $3000 a month in advertising revenues (both papers claimed a circulation of 10,000). Printing cost each of the fledgling publishers about $600; typesetting an additional $300; and the rest of the money went toward rent, phones, postage, and other related costs. Whatever was left over – when there was something left over – went toward salaries; Schultz and Miller at the O.B Times each drew several hundred dollars a month and ran the paper by themselves, writing under a variety of pseudonyms, while Nieusma, Wambach, and Jackson of the O-Beacon, also drawing several hundred dollars a month, relied on volunteer staff numbering between twenty and thirty per issue. “We always secretly hoped he [Schultz] wouldn’t make it so we gather those ad dollars that would have put us in the black and helped pay for a nice copy machine, a typewriter, and so on,” Nieusma says. “There are only so many ad dollars in Ocean Beach, and if one of us didn’t publish, the other guy could have scooped up more money,” In September of 1982, Nieusma finally got his wish – the O.B. Times closed down after a particularly bad month: only $900 in advertising revenue. Schultz says, “I folded because I didn’t want the quality to go down.” Nieusma’s happiness, however, proved short-lived. Last month Wayne Miller resurfaced with the revived dormant O.B. News, which he had purchased from Stan Sorenson for the price of a cocktail at an O.B. saloon.