I had the exact same reaction. I think it's a classic case of there being no upper bound on how much time or money can be consumed by a large organization trying to achieve some effect. They have amazingly labyrinthine and absurdly bloated ways of doing whatever they want. Like that saying that work expands to fill the time allotted for it. A given task generally can not be performed any faster than some specific lower bound. But there's no upper bound, and all you have to do is add more people, opinions, meetings, committees, processes, rules, laws, approvals, reversals, fights, dead ends, legacy architecture appeasement, technical debt, alternative explorations, dead time, vacations, etc. and you can blow up the time/dollar cost to whatever level you want.
Related note: I bet if some news organization used an off-the-shelf CMS like WordPress or Drupal, they could add a "paywall" to their site in less than a week, using mostly the services of a single engineer, and perhaps a designer. Let's call that a total project cost in the $400 to $4000 range.
ps. If any news organization decision-maker is reading this, I do indie contracting and would gladly add a paywall to your site for a mere... (pinkie in mouth) one million dollars!
Related note: I bet if some news organization used an off-the-shelf CMS like WordPress or Drupal, they could add a "paywall" to their site in less than a week, using mostly the services of a single engineer, and perhaps a designer. Let's call that a total project cost in the $400 to $4000 range.
ps. If any news organization decision-maker is reading this, I do indie contracting and would gladly add a paywall to your site for a mere... (pinkie in mouth) one million dollars!