Click here to receive Mediabistro’s Morning Media Newsfeed via email.

Yahoo! in Talks to Acquire Tumblr: Deal Could Reach As High As $1 Billion (Adweek)
Is Marissa Mayer about to make a game-changing acquisition? It appears so. Yahoo! is in serious talks with Tumblr to acquire the social blogging site, according to multiple sources familiar with the talks. While its revenue is modest, Tumblr has positioned itself as one of the few players in the digital ad world that is well-suited for brand advertising. And Tumblr is also the domain of the young, cool and creative crowd — not currently a Yahoo! sweet spot. AllThingsD Earlier this week, Yahoo! CFO Ken Goldman spoke at JPMorgan’s Global Technology conference and underscored the need for the aging Silicon Valley Internet giant to attract more users from the coveted 18-to-24-years-old age bracket. Along with more marketing, he explicitly said Yahoo! needed to be “cool again.” The Verge Since taking control of Yahoo!, Mayer has pursued a string of acquisitions, including Summly, Astrid, Jybe and others. In addition to the failed Dailymotion acquisition, the company has also been rumored to be looking at Hulu, although Mayer has previously said that the company is shopping for smaller targets valued in the $100 million range. Read more

Rob Walker is joining Yahoo! News as a technology and digital culture columnist. Walker’s work has appeared in publications like The New Republic, Wired and The Atlantic. From 2004 to 2011, he penned The New York Times Magazine’s “consumed” column.

Walker has also written several books, including Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are and Letters From New Orleans.

Walker will report to Chris Suellentrop, Yahoo! News’ deputy editor.

Yahoo! and Wenner Media are teaming up to create new content as part of a new cross-branding deal. Under the agreement, Yahoo!’s omg! and Yahoo! Music will share content and maintain a brand presence with Us Weekly, Rolling Stone and Men’s Journal; and vice versa.

The reason for the deal is simple: To extend all of the brands’ reach.

“This partnership combines boutique-quality entertainment content with unmatched scale,” said David Kang, Wenner Media’s chief digital officer, in a statement. “Rolling Stone and Us Weekly are iconic brands in music and celebrity news. As a leader in digital media, Yahoo! is the perfect partner to help these brands grow their digital footprint.”

Yahoo!’s Marissa Mayer is about to get a nice chunk of cash to work with. According to All Things D, China’s Alibaba Group is going to pay Yahoo! $7.6 billion to buy back 20 percent of Alibaba that Yahoo! owns. Yahoo! still owns another 20 percent.

If the deal goes through, that means Yahoo! would get about $7.1 billion for the deal, along with another $550 million for annual licensing fees that Alibaba has paid Yahoo!. In the end, Mayer would have about $4.5 billion.

That’s quite a lot of money to throw around. Yahoo! initially said it would give it to investors, but later relented on that position, saying that Mayer might keep it to acquire properties and make other moves. We can’t imagine that Yahoo!’s shareholders will be excited about that, no matter what she ends up buying.

Jacqueline Reses is joining Yahoo! as its executive vice president of people and development. Reses was formerly a partner, head of  media at Apax Partners, where she worked for 10 years. She has also served on several boards, including Cengage Learning and Nelson Education.

“We are very excited to have Jackie join the Yahoo! team, leading our efforts around finding and retaining the best talent,” said Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo!, in a statement. “Jackie brings two decades of uniquely applicable operational experience around structuring organizations, programs, and strategies to build world-class teams in media and technology. Her tremendous energy will serve our employees well, and we’re looking forward to her fresh perspectives.”

Rese joins Yahoo! on September 7.

Kathy Savitt, the founder and CEO of the photo sharing site Lockerz, is joining Yahoo! as chief marketing officer. Savitt started Lockerz in 2009. Prior to that she was executive vice president and chief marketing officer of American Eagle Outfitters for three years.

“We are very excited to welcome Kathy to Yahoo!,” said Marissa Mayer, Yahoo!’s fifth CEO in just three years, in a statement. “Her extensive experience in building and refining well-loved consumer brands like Amazon, American Eagle Outfitters and Lockerz will be incredibly valuable as we define Yahoo!’s future.

Savitt will begin at Yahoo! on September 14.

There have been more changes at Yahoo!. Capital New York reports that the site has named Hillary Frey editor-in-chief of Yahoo! News and Aaron Task editor-in-chief of Yahoo! Finance. Both are newly created roles.

Frey has been with Yahoo! since late last year, when she left Adweek to become Yahoo! News’ managing editor. Task joined Yahoo! in 2008, after serving as an editor of TheStreet.com.

The moves are expected to be formerly announced later today.

TVNewser: Hard to believe 365 days have passed since CNBC mainstay Mark Haines passed away. Former colleagues reflected on their longtime friend.

SocialTimes: Yahoo is giving its visitors a new experience with Axis. The search engine takes you from desktop to tablet.

10,000 Words: Twitter is just short on art for telling a story in 140 characters or less. New Yorker is taking it to the next level, tweeting an entire, 8,500-word short story. That should make for interesting RTs!

For Yahoo, the departures keep coming. Blake Irving, who had come to Yahoo under its former CEO Carol Bartz, is stepping down. This comes mere days after the company gave walking papers to 2,000 staffers. All Things D reports that Irving and Yahoo’s current CEO, Scott Thompson, never saw eye to eye:

Irving had largely opposed the strategy that Thompson has been aiming toward, said sources, and also strongly disagreed with laying off so many employees without a clear plan in place. Many inside and outside Yahoo agree.

He was also apparently concerned about the massive engineering and research talent exodus of late, especially in Yahoo’s vaunted Labs arm, which suffered major cuts in the layoffs.

There is no word on what Irving will do next, though sources told All Things D that he has already had several offers.

Scott Thompson, Yahoo’s relatively new CEO, is cleaning house. The company is laying off a whopping 2,000 staffers in a move that is estimated to save the company about $375 million a year.

According to The Huffington Post, Thompson claimed that the massive layoff was an ”important next step,” toward making Yahoo “better equipped to innovate as fast as our customers and our industry require.”

More, from Thompson:

We are intensifying our efforts on our core businesses and redeploying resources to our most urgent priorities. Our goal is to get back to our core purpose — putting our users and advertisers first — and we are moving aggressively to achieve that goal.