New Two River Times owner Domenic DiPiero watching the fireworks show he hosted for Riverview Medical Center at his mother’s home in Locust last month. Mickey Gooch, below with state Senator Joe Kyrillos, was also there. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
The Two River Times, a Red Bank-based broadsheet newspaper with a taste for photos of the moneyed set at society balls, has a new owner.
Domenic DiPiero, president of a borough-based retirement-plan consultancy, has acquired the 24-year-old weekly, the TRT reported in a brief article in the latest edition.
The seller was Mickey Gooch, who with his now ex-wife, Diane, acquired the paper from garrulous television personality Geraldo Rivera a decade ago.
Details about the transaction were not disclosed.
DiPiero, who grew up in the Navesink are of MIddletown, is the founder and president of Newport Capital Group.
“I look forward to continuing the great tradition that The Two River Times has built,” the TRT quotes him saying in the announcement of the sale. “I want the newspaper to continue to be a source of pride and news in the community.”
Gooch is the founder and executive chairman of GFI Group, a Manhattan-based trading firm. For a number of years, he wrote a column branded “Beside the Point” for the TRT, in which he defended executive compensation as a product of free markets and said that cows were more to blame for global warming than Land Rovers. His Navesink River estate in Rumson is on the market for $16.5 million.
The Two River Times was founded in 1990 by Claudia Ansorge, who sold her interest to Rivera – then a Middletown resident – in 1996.