With a budget like that you should be able to get a very good programmer to create a custom CMS for you. A good programmer with a code library he has written himself wouldn’t take longer than 50 hours. An existing solution will never serve your needs as well as a custom one.
I have used it some just to give some clients very basic control.
But I have had issues in dealing with page locks, etc that another post has mentioned.
As far as using wordpress, and a few other ones, I would suggest an open source CMS and then have it customized to fit what you are trying to do.
You will probably have a lot less headaches in the long run.
We had experience in last years with different type of clients. Small companies and biggest one.
Almost 99% from them can had a solution based on open source CMS.
We use for PHP : www.typo3.org , joomla-mambo and sometimes Drupal , Wordpress
We use for JAVA based CMS: www.opencms.com
We use for .NET based CMS : dotnukecms .
There is not a problem if you will find a solution for your site based on CMS , but there is a problem if your budget is well invested .
There is a problem about how easy you can customize and how easy you can develop new modules.
Is about how easy you can find very good teams with project managers and developers which can give you good solutions for years , if your business online will go well .
Is about support , about documentation , cause any customization means something different than initial open source solutions and every business is unique based on creativity and business strategy of the owner of that business .
For example we have a business partner which use from 4 years ago eshop : oscommerce .
At this moment the initial oscommerce solution has not connection with actual solution that client has developed in last 4 years .
Is not easy for me to tell you based on few words that you put in the forum if is enough your budget for your CMS .
Normally not the CMS is the problem , but the developers and the business partnership that you will develop with them .
just an opinion
Dan MASCA
I’ve been tooling around with DotNetNuke recently and have been very pleased with the results.
Expession Engine from pmachine and evoarticles get my vote.
I’ve been following joomla ever since its existence and mambo before that. I like the way Joomla is going… more towards a framework allowing your developer lots of control and options for expansion. Its free, has a huge user base, and they have commercial development available as well.
[Joomla Homepage](http://www.joomla.org)
[Joomla Forums](http://forum.joomla.org)
[url="http://www.jamboworks.com"][left]JamboWorks - Commercial Development w/ joomla
[/left]
good luck...
How about Article Manager from www.interactivetools.com ? The best part? It’s only $299 compared to $2000. And you can hire a programmer from there to customize your site 100% if needed.
Drupal would be my choice. Version 4.7 will be out soon and the RC looks great 
Can do allot. Would be worth a play with! 
Joomla does not sound like a smart choice to me. From what I have seen it is more brochure site oriented - for a simple 30 page site or w/e.
You mentioned needing a CMS for a news site which to me means that you are looking for something that allows lots of content and interaction… more community based if anything.
Are there any news sites built off Joomla?
I know that www.theonion.com was built off Drupal and definately pulls its weight.
Drupal is also very great for SEO. You can create your own CSS template, can rewrite your page urls and do custom titles. All the top on page things needed for SEO.
This is why I feel that Drupal is the best choice.
Why not try out opensource CMS’s before spending your 2K. If not, you can probably have a custom CMS written for around that much.
Krang - http://krang.sourceforge.net
-Steve
Any idea if SitePoint is using ezpublish?
I agree with that… 
thank you
For me it is better, when i don`t have a time, and i just want to have website running early. i will take one CMS (open source), make a fast pretty easy config, insert content and every week i will spent few minutes/hours browsing for usefull plugins which i should use. or another way, i will pay to someone few $$$ and he will make for me what i already need and want, because i know about cms which i have installed
np. there are lot of solutions, and lot of persons, which are making customizations fo open source CMS. good example is payed news system module for joomla. this really rocks
opensourcecms.com is built of the mambo/joomla core. That site gets millions of hits… as joomla.org, and devshed.com. joomla is more than capable.
joomla’s documentation is A+. The communication between the community and the dev’s is great as you can from the [url=“http://dev.joomla.org/component/option,com_jd-wp/Itemid,51/”]blogs and the forums.
The whole developer section of the joomla site is sweet. Very Informative.
for a commercial one, check out Activesite at http://www.aurigalogic.com/auriga/avs/home/solutions/ecm/
If you go open source I’d put my vote in for Drupal. It’s such a simple, flexible, powerful system. You really can’t go wrong.
I would suggest one of the free and open source software
Drupal
Joomla
or opensource cms
Personal fav: Drupal
All three has great community and can be customized.
Take a look at http://www.phpblogmanager.com
Wordpress, or textpattern , spend a bit of time customizing them and bobs your uncle - shouldn’t take too long and i’ve found them very succesful in the past