The photo-sharing app Instagram on Thursday completed a full retreat from its proposed new terms of service that led to instant outcry from users, Nicole Perlroth and Jenna Wortham reported. The question, however, was whether the move came too late from Instagram, which was acquired this year by Facebook and is under the same pressure as its parent company to generate advertising revenue. The proposed changes included a clause that suggested Instagram would share users’ data — like their favorite places, bands, restaurants and hobbies — with Facebook and its advertisers to direct ads more precisely. In the interim, other services, including Flickr, which coincidentally has just introduced a new app, appeared to be gaining followers.

The Boston Globe on Thursday appointed a new editor, Brian McGrory, a Boston-area native who began his connection to the newspaper as a paperboy, Christine Haughney reports. He has been a columnist, White House correspondent and metro editor in his 23 years there, yet was something of an unexpected choice. Mr. McGrory succeeds Martin Baron, who was picked to be the next editor of The Washington Post. “After Marty Baron’s extremely successful tenure here, we don’t need any overhaul,” said Christopher M. Mayer, the publisher of The Globe, which is owned by The New York Times Company.

Gil Friesen, who helped establish AM Records with the band leader Herb Alpert and music promoter Jerry Moss, in the 1960s, died in Los Angeles on Dec. 13 at age 75, Paul Vitello writes. He was one of the first employees at the record company, which took the A from Alpert, and the M from Moss — Mr. Friesen, Mr. Alpert said, was the ampersand in the middle. He encouraged the company to produce movies too, and later became a founding partner of the Classic Sports cable channel, which was sold to ESPN in 1997 for $175 million. Thus, Mr. Vitello writes, he became known in Hollywood as one of the few executives with entrepreneurial successes in music, film and TV.

On Thursday night, the MTV series “Jersey Shore” signed off after a six-season run that introduced characters like the Situation and Snooki. The real Jersey Shore has been in people’s thoughts because of the destruction there from Hurricane Sandy; expect the show and its cast to quickly fade away, never to return, Ken Tucker writes for Entertainment Weekly. At the top of the piece, he frames his question: “What is ‘Jersey Shore’ ’s lasting significance, its enduring impact?” His answer: “Absolutely none.” You would be forgiven for stopping right there, but he continues:

But by any measure, there is nothing about Jersey Shore that merits enshrining it in any category of TV history other than “Time Killer.” As I can attest in preparing to write this piece, it doesn’t hold up as entertaining in reruns; it already plays like one of those ancient artifacts of papyrus — a newspaper, I believe they were called — that has been crumpled and tossed to the air.

I wrote that @JustinBieber has millions more followers than @Pontifex. @oss_romano says #Pope has more retweets per follower than Bieber!

— Rachel Donadio — NYT (@RachelDonadio) 21 Dec 12

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/21/the-breakfast-meeting-instagram-in-retreat-and-jersey-shore-signs-off/?partner=rss&emc=rss