Details about the redesign and technology overhaul: http://source.opennews.org/en-US/articles/behind-scenes-nyt-...

i.e. "… using Github instead of SVN for version control, Vagrant environments, Puppet deployment, using requireJS so five different versions of jQuery don’t get loaded, proper build/test frameworks, command-line tools for generating sprites, the use of LESS with a huge set of mixins, a custom grid framework, etc."