Changing the footer in magento theme

Check out app/design/frontend/rwd/default/layout/page.xml, do a find for "footer" and you'll get right to the Footer blocks. The "Quick Links" are actually set under various spots in System > Configuration.

Here's what I'd suggest:

Make local.xml (in the same folder as page.xml above) if you haven't yet, and remove the "Quick Links" and "My Account" blocks if you don't plan to use them.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<layout version="0.1.0">
    <default>
        <reference name="footer">
            <remove name="footer_links"/>
            <remove name="footer_links2"/>
        </reference>
    </default>
</layout>

Now you can make two static CMS blocks for the two other sections you want, and add them in via local.xml again. Say you call them footer_posts and footer_news, we're adding more into local.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<layout version="0.1.0">
    <default>
        <reference name="footer">
            <remove name="footer_links"/>
            <remove name="footer_links2"/>
            <block type="cms/block" name="footer_posts">
                <action method="setBlockId"><block_id>footer_posts</block_id></action>
            </block>
            <block type="cms/block" name="footer_news">
                <action method="setBlockId"><block_id>footer_news</block_id></action>
            </block>
        </reference>
    </default>
</layout>

Tested on a fresh 1.9 install and it works just fine.