Remembering Julie Rannazzisi of Marketwatch

Jon Friedman, a former colleague, remembers Marketwatch’s Julie Rannazzisi, who died 10 years ago Thursday.

Friedman writes, “We worked together for four-and-a-half years at MarketWatch.com, the financial website, before she succumbed. She sat at the desk right across from mine. She was excellent company, cheerful, pragmatic and always willing to share in a bit of gallows humor.

“Really, though, Julie was our rock. Not only did she hold down the demanding job of following — by the minute, it sometimes seemed — the machinations of the ever-volatile stock market. She loved talking to her sources about the most (to me, the hotshot media writer on the scene) mind-numbing, data-driven minutiae. Julie loved to follow the market and she’d say sagely, ‘The stock market doesn’t lie.’ To her, there was something always reassuring about the market, which wasn’t swayed by human emotion or past performance or charisma or effort.

“I watched her disintegration in a harrowing way. It didn’t take long for her to need to take a leave of absence from work in 2002. We all worried about worst-case scenarios, of course. But when she returned, vigorous, to work in 2003, it seemed like a miracle. It was, quite simply, too good to be true.

“As it turned out, this was too good to be true. She had to leave the office for the safety of her apartment, in Turtle Bay. Of course, I, and the others, faithfully visited her. Knowing the truth all too well, we’d reassure that she would be back at work, tediously crunching numbers. We had often talked about our mutual love for a silly film called ‘Meet the Parents.’ The sequel, ‘Meet the Fokkers,’ was scheduled to come out in movie theaters and I told her that we’d go to see it again.”

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