Kamala Harris is the Democratic presidential nominee. The vice president accepted her party’s nomination last night in a patriotic speech closing out the Democratic National Convention. Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have used their time in the spotlight this week to promote a populist economic agenda meant to lift up America’s middle class.

But we’re not here to talk about that. Marketplace’s Nova Safo was at the convention all week, reporting on the economic stories unfolding offstage at the United Center in Chicago. For example, the dozens of Democratic mayors making their case for more affordable housing.

Windy City businesses hoped for a DNC windfall. Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in the country, with an unemployment rate almost double the national average. But office workers are staying away from downtown during the DNC festivities, and some restaurant owners say all the out-of-towners aren’t boosting business like they expected.

Delegates spend thousands to attend political conventions. Public school teacher Lindsey Tibke told Marketplace that party officials in Washington told her 111-person delegation to budget $5,000 each for the trip. The last DNC, held during an early phase of the pandemic, was virtual, but experts told us the coalition-building benefits of an IRL gathering pay off on Election Day.

This DNC is still playing out online. For the first time, the Democratic Party invited 200 social media influencers to attend the convention along with traditional journalists like ours. “Marketplace Tech” spoke with one of these credentialed content creators, Malynda Hale, who said the diversity of creators at the DNC may help turn out the youth vote.

“Not all of the influencers here do politics or do social justice,” she said. “There are food influencers here. There are beauty influencers here, but if you can show those audiences, like, ‘This is important to me as well,’ they might start to take an interest.”

Smart in a Shot

Who says print is dead? Not The Onion.

The satirical news website announced with its signature sass that it would print its first physical newspaper in more than a decade this week. The Chicago-based publication handed out free copies at the Democratic National Convention.  

“Only with print can we ever hope to target readers too stupid or infirm to use the internet,” wrote Bryce P. Tetraeder, the fake CEO of Global Tetrahedron, a very real company that acquired The Onion earlier this year. “Only through print can we tell imbeciles like yourself precisely how to think in a single, unswerving voice.” 

Real-life Onion CEO Ben Collins said print is also an escape hatch from a toxic online publishing environment. Collins told The Washington Post that the paper would offer readers an alternative to “AI slop” and “violence and horror all the time.”

The Onion discontinued its weekly print edition in 2013. Now, subscribers who pay $60 per year will get the paper via snail mail on a monthly basis. The Onion’s (real) execs say they hope subscription revenue and live events can help it turn a profit this year. 

And The Onion isn’t the only publication betting on a special print edition: Playboy announced this month it would publish an annual magazine starting in 2025. 

The Numbers

The week-long Burning Man event kicks off this weekend in the Black Rock Desert outside of Reno, Nevada. The event has sold out every year since 2011, often within minutes of tickets going live, but 2024 sales are soft. Following heavy rains last year, ticket sales are down for the first time in over a decade. Let’s do the numbers. 

1992

Burning Man began on a San Francisco beach in 1986, before moving to the Black Rock Desert in the early ‘90s. The event promotes radical self-expression and self-reliance, and the first tickets sold in 1992 for $25 each. 

80,000 

Almost 80,000 people now convene at the Black Rock Desert site, known as Black Rock City, to attend Burning Man every August. Participation has steadily risen throughout the years, from 4,000 attendees in 1995 to over 50,000 in 2010. Last year, more than 74,000 people showed up. 

$575 

Ticket prices for 2024 start at $575 ($630.75 after taxes and fees), though the organization is offering tickets at different price tiers, the lowest being $225 (by application only) and topping out at $1,500 ($1,639 after taxes and fees). Vehicle passes cost an additional $150. Attendees typically spend thousands on transportation, camp fees, costumes and more.

$100,000

More than 30% of last year’s attendees reported a personal income of over $100,000, and almost 10% had incomes exceeding $300,000. These figures have been creeping upward since at least 2015, while all other income groups have remained flat or fell. Detractors say the event has become a playground for Silicon Valley billionaires. 

0.8 inches

Costs are just one factor that could be driving Burners away. Less than an inch of rain makes roads in the Nevada playa impassable, and last year tens of thousands of Burning Man attendees got stuck in the mud.

None of Us Is as Smart as All of Us

Tell us what’s making you smarter at smarter@marketplace.org. We’d love to include your recommendation in a future newsletter.

Devout shareholder activists

This group of Kansas nuns are no strangers to investing. The Benedictine sisters of Mount St. Scholastica have bought stock in corporations that match their religious ideals as well as some that don’t, so that they can push for more transparency, better ethics and stronger environmental protections. Host Kimberly Adams recommends an Associated Press article about the nuns and the history of faith-based shareholder activism.

The long hangover

When banks lent Elon Musk funds  to buy Twitter, now rebranded as X, they did so thinking that they’d be able to quickly sell his debt off and collect lucrative fees. But no one came running to buy up the $13 billion in loans. Writer Ellen Rolfes (hi) recommends a Wall Street Journal article (gift link), which explains why this so-called “hung” deal has become a huge drag. 

Fast fashion feuds

Chinese online retailer Shein redefined fast fashion and attracted allegations of ripping off designers to churn out low-quality dupes. So it’s pretty interesting that Shein has filed its own intellectual property lawsuits against competitor Temu for allegedly doing the same. Editor Stephanie Siek is reading an Associated Press article about the dueling lawsuits between two super-cheap online retailers.