FiredogLake and 'membership' blogging

The theoretically progressive-ish group blog and community political portal and forum FiredogLake is looking to launch a membership model. Is this like NPR, with pledges? I thought FDL already had a PayPal link onsite; besides, I know I already get "pledge reguest" e-mails from the site.

Anyway, it sounds like this is something more. Is the "membership," though, NOT something like NPR, and rather, a subscription under another name? I mean, it's asking "members" to vote on a new logo;

If the logo is going to be used to "brand" FDL tchotchkes, it could be a subscription model, not a pledge model, anyway. That's the way enviro groups, especially, work.

A subscription/member model - will it work? Here's some skepticism, not just about the model, but about FDL.

Here's the link to what FDL calls the "membership association program." UGH. Anything with the word "association" like that sounds SO effing corporatized. Because, related to "association" in this context is "associates." Like Walmart "associates." Or Amway "associates."

Here's what FDL says:

When Craig Newmark of Craigslist predicted last October that NPR would be a “dominant force” in news in ten years because of its membership model, a lot of people were surprised. But behind the scenes at FDL, we had collectively come to the same conclusion after reading Jon Walker’s series on “Lessons From the Nonpartisan League.” For months now, we have all been working together to come up with a membership association program that will give our community members a way to increase their involvement with FDL as well as expand our ability to cover and impact public issues.

First, NPR has an oftimes dysfunctional relationship with member stations. That will probably get worse before it gets better, if it does. Second, just because Craig Newmark, an unethical advertising website operator who runs housing adds that violate the Fair Housing Act but gets to do it, a court has ruled, because he's not a newspaper, has succeeded in a niche with a one-time, unorganized site, makes him nowhere near a guru. Nor, with such an unprogressive attitude on this, sexual services ads and the sex worker industry and other things, does it make his advice something that should be followed with out moral skepticism anyway.

In either case, I'm curious ... is this an NPR membership program? If so, why? Just add logo-branded tchotchkes to a Paypal page. Or is this a subscription model for premium content. If that's the case, I expect the paywalled section to become about as relevant to opinion discourse as Times Select was.

A personal note. I got involved with FiredogLake after seeing that its founders were a touch more progressive, or whatever, than Josh Marshall or Kos. I got more involved, and started a diary after Josh eliminated them from TPM.

That said, overall, FDL isn't that much more progressive.

The CorrenteWire link above also opened my eyes in other ways. I didn't realize people had been banned from FDL in the past. Given that I was, if not technically banned, at least blocked from posting, at Kos, that's something very disquieting.

And, it's true that people like Jane Hamsher and Marcy Wheeler and still, at end of day, Democrats-right-or-wrong Democrats. Ditto on someone like Spencer Ackerman, i'm sure, coming from The New Republic, among other places.