It's a fairly complex problem. They probably wanted to model a bunch of different systems to 'prove' they were making the right choice. Ultimately that will determine who to congratulate or blame in 6 months so you can imagine everyone involved in the process was interested in staking a claim to success or evading the blame of failure. So take every facet of the paper's expenses/revenue and figure they ran the numbers dozens of ways for each minute part of the operation factoring in all their partnerships, ad buys, etc. They are a news gathering organization so they probably approached the problem in some depth. Plus they probably had good expense accounts so you know.. no need to rush it.
