Wealth & Money Quote by Robert McChesney

"Maybe if you and ten of your friends" is the hook because it performs a little magic trick: it frames media ownership as a scrappy, communal adventure, the way people talk about starting a band or launching a food truck. McChesney’s sentence is pitched in the key of American optimism - pool your savings, borrow a little, buy something overlooked, take chances, have fun. It’s almost a dare.

The subtext is harsher. By choosing something as quaint as "some obscure station in Sonoma", he’s pointing to how narrow the entry points have become. You don’t buy a megaphone; you buy a whisper. The fantasy depends on a string of maybes because the real landscape - consolidation, deregulation, debt-financed mergers, advertising gatekeeping - makes even the "obscure station" feel like a long shot. "Borrow some money" sounds casual, but it’s doing ideological work: it normalizes risk and personal leverage as the price of participation in what’s supposed to be a public sphere.

McChesney’s intent, as a media critic, is to expose a democracy problem without resorting to pure lament. He uses the language of entrepreneurship to show what’s been lost: the idea that ordinary people could plausibly control the channels that shape public life. "Take some chances and have some fun" lands as bittersweet, because it’s both an invitation and an indictment - a reminder that the most radical thing about media, now, is simply getting a seat at the table.