a fresh start

US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a
'clean slate'

A wave of local publications are considering requests to wipe or edit
old articles to give their subjects a fresh start
...
...
"In the old days, you put a story in the newspaper and it quickly, if
not immediately, receded into memory," said Chris Quinn, editor of
Cleveland.com and the Plain Dealer newspaper. "But because of our
[search engine] power, anything we write now about somebody is always
front and center."
...
...
There was some initial internal resistance, but eventually Quinn and
his staff came up with general parameters: they would not erase names
in cases of violence, sex offenses, crimes against children or
corruption. Police officers would be treated as public officials, so
stories of their wrongdoing would remain. The incident typically had
to be at least four years old, although the paper has made exceptions.
Quinn did not want to have strict rules, since every case is
different. The guiding question, he said, was: "What's more valuable -
this story remaining available to the public, or this person being
able to move on?"

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/04/newspaper-crime-stories