Mike Angus, EVP and General Counsel of Fox Interactive Media, is departing that job for another in New Corp. (NWS), as new digital head Jon Miller continues to reshape the division.

Last week, BoomTown reported that FIM CFO Ed McKenna was leaving his post and also the company, part of many changes taking place related to News Corp.’s digital properties. (News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.)

It’s all part of a major rejiggering of FIM, which came into being almost four years ago, although not an elimination of the unit, as has been reported.

More likely, it will include a name change–perhaps to the Digital Media Group–as well as a much streamlined organization that gives more autonomy to FIM’s Web, online advertising and publishing technology units.

The largest of those Internet sites in FIM is, of course, MySpace.

Since Miller arrived in the early spring, he has focused on fixing the troubled, but still huge, social-networking site.

He quickly replaced its co-founder and CEO, Chris DeWolfe, with new managers.

Those execs, led by former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta, have done massive layoffs at MySpace recently and are now beginning a major overhaul of its product, which needs to innovate after a fall-off of growth and engagement.

“In a lot of ways, FIM has become an artificial construct and a lot of the infrastructure it has created should be out in the individual businesses,” said one person close to the situation. “So, since it is not really an operating unit, it will be taken down to the minimal size to make it work.”

That apparently means it does not need a separate CFO or even a general counsel.

Currently, there are about 100 FIM-only employees, mostly in human resources, accounting and legal. Some of those will likely be farmed out to the units they primarily service or be let go if those units decide they do not need the staff.

The original idea of FIM was to create a unit to house most of News Corp.’s standalone digital units, including MySpace and IGN videogame and entertainment sites, and to have common financial, legal and even ad sales execs to serve them.

The concept is that they all had tech, legal, policy and synergistic reasons for being together.

Said a News Corp. press release from July 2005, which announced both the Angus and McKenna hires:

“News Corporation today announced the formation of Fox Interactive Media (FIM), a new unit that will leverage the strength of Fox’s distinctive entertainment, news and sports brands across the Internet to offer a richer online experience to its millions of users.”

That construct, said many people I interviewed inside and outside News Corp., was built to accommodate a much larger unit, with additional large acquisitions after the MySpace one.

Those never happened, although News Corp. was in many such talks with giants such as Yahoo (YHOO), Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL and Microsoft (MSFT) about trading assets.

“Over time, FIM became more like a shadow government,” said one person familiar with the situation. “Now, it makes sense for the properties to govern themselves, with a lot less meddling and let them rise and fall on their own.”

Many News Corp. sources point to the success of premium video service Hulu, which is run as a joint venture with GE (GE) unit NBC Universal, as being managed relatively autonomously by experienced Internet execs with less corporate involvement.

The result has been a popular and fast-growing site, which has gotten kudos for its innovative consumer offering (although it is still working on finding a highly lucrative business model).

Does that mean that some units, such as MySpace, could even be spun out again?

Doubtful for now, said several sources, but still a possibility.

In any case, the idea of a corporate layer over corporate units within a larger corporation does seem less than fleet in the faster-moving Web 2.0 world.

As to the new name of the unit, besides the chief digital officer title, Miller also was given the title of chairman and CEO of the newly created News Digital Media group.

Therefore, several sources said that the units could be under a simpler and lighter Digital Media Group umbrella.

Goodness gracious, make it stop!

You must know by now how much BoomTown loves internal Yahoo (YHOO) memos. But this is getting ridiculous.

It’s been like a flash flood after a long drought at Sunnyvale HQ today, as Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz turns on the fire hose of a whole lot of communicating.

A lot. A real lot.

“I know you guys have reorg fatigue,” wrote Bartz, in the latest email to employees about the management reorganization finally announced this morning.

Also memo fatigue at All Things Digital HQ, if you can believe it.

Okay, I give, Carol! Well, for now, until another juicy internal memo you aren’t handing out freely lands in my inbox, for example, such as one about a search deal with Microsoft (MSFT). I’d like one of those to go, please!

But, in a gesture of a leak-free peace (can the drop-kick bounty be suspended for just today?), I am posting this last memo about the management reorganization from Carol “Chatterbox” Bartz.

(Although, I wish she would stop insulting the press, as she does below again. We are just doing our job–and very accurately, as it turned out–yet the jibes continue. Which is odd, frankly, given that Bartz has had mostly glowing coverage in the media her entire career.)

But Bartz did seem to leave a little mystery in the email still, as if even more rearranging were to come.

Writes Bartz (my bolding):

“As soon as decisions were made, I wanted you to know about them–even if that means we don’t have all the details nailed down yet”.

Wait, are the deets all nailed by Bartz’s productive hammer or aren’t they?

At least, thankfully, the note is capitalized properly, unlike the quaint no-caps stylings of former CEO Jerry Yang.

In any case, if you just can’t get enough, here is Bartz’s reorg blog from this morning and her new management structure memo too.

And here is her entire email on the reorg to employees:

From: Carol Bartz
Reply-To: Carol Bartz
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:02:49 -0800
To: “all-worldwide@yahoo-inc.com”
Subject: Our New Organization

Yahoos,

As I’ve gotten to know Yahoo! over the past several weeks, I’ve developed a point of view on how our organization should be structured to set us up for success.

Our goal is simple: to consistently deliver awesome consumer and advertiser experiences, everywhere in the world we do business. Delivering great customer experiences is everyone’s job at Yahoo!–and each part of our organization will have a clear role in making that happen every day.

The timing of this announcement is important. As soon as decisions were made, I wanted you to know about them–even if that means we don’t have all the details nailed down yet. Yes, there’s been a lot of speculation in the media over the past few days…that’s been a little frustrating, but I’m not willing to speak publicly about decisions before they’re final. Today, they are–so I’ll lay out our new organizational structure for you now.

I know you guys have reorg fatigue. Hang in there–our intention is to leave this structure in place for two to four years. We’ll continue to make adjustments as needed, but we expect this core structure to stay put.

The structure outlined below will enable us to make big improvements in our product quality and operational efficiency. Part of that is simplicity–I’m frankly amazed at how complicated some things are here! We’ll have much clearer decision making and accountability. Product and regional teams will share responsibility for revenue targets and expense management, but we’ll have one P&L, for which I’m accountable.

We will also be in a better position to really listen to and understand our customers–both consumers and advertisers. I think we’ve gotten into the habit of focusing internally too much and we sometimes forget who we’re here to serve. You’ll notice that our management structure puts a renewed focus on the customer, with stronger feedback loops across the company…and they all come through me.

Also, as you know, no organizational structure is a substitute for collaboration, communication and trust. We’ll all need to evolve our behavior a bit–as teams and as individuals – to make this structure work the way it’s designed.

So here’s the overview, with the roles that will report directly to me. As you’ll see, some of our leaders are still to be determined. I know you’ll
want more detail than what’s below–you can learn more on Backyard: http://backyard.yahoo.com/ourorg .

Products: We’ve combined Tech and Product groups under one roof, led by Ari Balogh as EVP Products & CTO. Ari’s charter is to deliver global products that enable extraordinary consumer and advertiser experiences. Ari’s direct reports now include one leader for each product group–we’ve taken care of the “two in a box” problem.

One important note: The Connected Life team has been integrated into various parts of the new organization. Our mobile strategy remains a key part of Yahoo!’s focus going forward and all of our product groups will own mobile innovations. After leading Connected Life for four years, Marco Boerries has resigned from the company to spend more time with his family in Europe. We thank Marco for his important contributions at Yahoo!.

Regions: There are now two: North America and International. As I’ve said before, international growth is critical for Yahoo!, which has become too reliant on its U.S. business over the years.

The regions deliver Yahoo!’s products, programming and services to consumers, partners and advertisers in local markets. They will partner closely with the newly formed Regional Solutions & Products group in Ari’s organization to help drive a significant shift in how Yahoo! develops products for different geographies. The goal is to have global platforms on which regional product offerings are based.

The North American region–comprised of the U.S. and Canada–is led by Hilary Schneider. The leader of our International region, to be hired soon, will be responsible for a cohesive Yahoo! global strategy and seizing our international growth opportunities. Until we determine who’ll lead the International region, Rose Tsou (Asia), Rich Riley (Europe) and Keith Nilsson (Emerging Markets) will continue to report to me.

Marketing: Elisa Steele will be joining Yahoo! as our Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), effective March 23. Elisa joins us from NetApp where she was SVP, Corporate Marketing. Previous to NetApp, she held executive positions in marketing at Sun Microsystems. Elisa will oversee our global marketing strategy and provide direction for our marketing function. She’ll bring together the various Yahoo! marketing teams that have been spread across the company. Reporting into Elisa will be Brand Marketing, Audience Marketing, Corporate Communications, Insights, Policy & Privacy, Community Affairs and related central teams. I’m delighted to have Elisa joining the team.

Customer Advocacy: As I said, we can do much better in hearing the voice of the customer across Yahoo!, and incorporating what we hear into all of our work day-to-day. We have opened a search for a leader, who will oversee Customer Care and Ad Operations globally with the goal of improving how we support Yahoo!’s users and advertisers. In the interim, these teams will continue to report to Hilary.

Service Engineering & Operations: This new team is responsible for delivering common technology services at scale, including application management and infrastructure. No matter how cool our products are, the customer’s experience won’t be great unless our applications consistently deliver. Note that we’re bringing Service Engineering together as one group because these engineers bring expertise that is best applied horizontally. Leading this organization is David Dibble, who joined Yahoo! in December. David’s team also will be accountable for delivering more effective corporate IT systems.

Corporate Functions: Blake Jorgensen will be leaving Yahoo! and I am searching for a new CFO. Blake will remain through a transition with his successor, and I want to thank Blake for all of his great contributions to Yahoo! over the past two years. Mike Callahan will continue to lead our Legal team, and David Windley leads our Human Resources function. Joel Jones joins the team as my Chief of Staff.

So that’s the high-level view. These changes are effective immediately, but we’ve got more work to do in filling out the structure of each group. In the short term, this transition will be challenging for many of our people. My executive staff will be working with their organizations as quickly as possible to create further clarity. For example, we’ll need to recast budgets and adjust work areas so we have the right people working side-by-side.

I want to thank all of you who’ve shared your ideas and views with me since I arrived. Several leaders across Yahoo! came together to design this new structure–I’ve been very impressed with their dedication to the right outcomes, particularly how they’ve embraced the need to eliminate the silos that have been a drag on this organization for so long.

I think this organizational structure has the potential to solve many of the issues you’ve helped me better understand. Of course, new issues will emerge. But I know we’ll be aligned and nimble in tackling them together.

This is a tremendous, proud company with a powerful brand, great products and a bright future. Now’s the time to get more focused than ever on delighting our users and advertisers. Let’s show them how great Yahoo! can be.

Carol

A lot has been written about the need for drastic layoffs at Yahoo, including reports that the troubled company was preparing to fire from 3,000 to 3,500 of its 15,000 employees.

As dramatic as that figure is, according to numerous sources, it’s more likely that Yahoo will cut only half that, beginning sometime in mid-December.

That date could move up, of course, depending on how bad the economic outlook get for Yahoo, but it is not likely Yahoo will make any move in front of its earnings next Tuesday, October 21.

Why? Well, because what Yahoo’s top brass has already done is given its managers cost-cutting targets and not specific marching orders on laying off a certain number of people across the board.

And that’s even if the management consulting company that Yahoo has hired to look over the company’s operations, Bain & Co., recommends more.

In addition, the figures that top execs–such as SVPs Hilary Schneider and Ash Patel–have handed down to their minions is a process that includes considerable negotiating and maneuvering among and between various managers. So, nothing is set in stone.

Thus, how Yahoo (YHOO) under-bosses reach those goals and what gets lopped does not have to necessarily be employees.

For example, a manager could table a project in the search area or perhaps not expand features planned.

Of course, slashing employee costs is always the easiest way to show significant cuts, and it does send a definite message to investors that Yahoo realizes it must clean up its operations.

“But that’s hacking and we have to be more surgical,” said one exec involved in the process.

But look for more cuts in staff in certain areas, because people are its major cost, such as in Yahoo’s finance, human resources and general and administrative units.

Of course, if its economic situation continues to dim and its stock keeps up its downward slide, Yahoo could move to more dramatic staff cuts, which many feel it should do right away.

One note: If Yahoo manages to successfully complete its merger talks with Time Warner (TWX) over its AOL unit before the December cost-cutting moves go into effect, the company could hold off all cuts until the pair figure out their integration plans.

And then, I would expect, the really large-scale layoffs would begin.