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

Civil rights advocates across the US have long fought to free people from their criminal records, with campaigns to expunge old cases and keep people’s past arrests private when they apply for jobs and housing.

The efforts are critical, as more than 70 million Americans have prior convictions or arrests – roughly one in three adults. But the policies haven’t addressed one of the most damaging ways past run-ins with police can derail people’s lives: old media coverage.

Some newsrooms are working to fill that gap.

A handful of local newspapers across the US have in recent years launched programs to review their archives and consider requests to remove names or delete old stories to protect the privacy of subjects involved in minor crimes.

View image in fullscreen The Oregonian newspaper at its headquarters in Portland in 2013. The newspaper moved to a new building in 2014. Photograph: Don Ryan/AP

“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.”

Quinn pioneered a “right-to-be-forgotten” experiment in 2018, motivated by the many inquiries he would receive from subjects describing the harms of past crime coverage and pleading for deletion. “People would say: ‘Your story is wrecking my life. I made a mistake, but … I’ve changed my life.’”

It was long considered taboo in media to retract or alter old stories, particularly when there are no concerns about accuracy. But Quinn said he felt an ethical obligation to rethink those norms. “I couldn’t take it any more … I just got tired of telling people no and standing on tradition instead of being thoughtful.”

He recalled an early case of a drunken teenager who broke part of a monument in a cemetery and was charged. Years later, he had “completely atoned” and was starting to apply for jobs, Quinn said. “He did something stupid as a kid … and he said: ‘I can’t move on.’” The editor granted his request, removed his name and presented it to his colleagues as a model for similar cases.

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?”

You have this thought in your mind that you’re one Google [search] away from everything being ripped away Saun Hough, partnerships director at Californians for Safety and Justice

The concept has since spread to the Boston Globe, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Bangor Daily News in Maine, the Oregonian and New Jersey’s NJ.com. The efforts gained momentum after racial justice protests in 2020 prompted newsroom reflections across the US about the media’s legacy of biased and harmful coverage, including its widespread use of mugshots.

Quinn dramatically scaled up his work after receiving Google funding allowing his newsroom to develop a tool for proactively identifying stories potentially worthy of deletion. The work was painstaking, but allowed for thousands of removals, making the program more equitable, instead of only benefiting readers aware of its initiative.

The Portland-based Oregonian once had community reporters in bureaus in surrounding suburbs who would cover hyperlocal news, including very trivial offenses, said Therese Bottomly, the paper’s editor. “Is that something that should really haunt somebody for years and years?” she questioned. Recognizing these were minor offenses the paper no longer covered, she formally launched a clean slate program in 2021, establishing an internal committee to review requests.

The Oregonian offers several options. It can remove a mugshot – a logical step after Oregon changed the law to limit the release of booking photos, with lawmakers recognizing their severe harm. The paper can also remove a subject’s name, delete the story entirely, or ask Google to deindex the article, meaning it would still exist on OregonLive.com, but wouldn’t easily surface in a web search. The committee factchecks claims of requesters, ensuring they have completed court requirements and stayed clean.

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Each case is carefully considered. An educator who had an expunged misdemeanor harassment case requested removal, but the Oregonian decided to maintain its article because additional reporting suggested he had dodged sexual misconduct allegations for years. The committee has removed articles about a man jailed for car thefts and a woman caught with illegal drugs.

In November, Bottomly published excerpts from one subject’s heartfelt plea for the removal of an article about a non-violent conviction when he had “hit rock bottom” in the throes of addiction. He spoke of his long journey of rehabilitation and the family he was now raising.

“I can now take pride in saying my life is unrecognizable from the one written about in the OregonLive article,” he wrote. “I live in fear that a single Google search of my name will ruin what I have worked so hard to build.” His nearly 10-year-old story was removed. In total, the Oregonian has approved 56 requests, partially approved 11 (including deindexing but not removing) and denied 29 cases, Bottomly said.

Bottomly noted that the vast majority of people in state prison will eventually be released. “These folks are going to be our neighbors, our co-workers and hopefully contributing members of society someday. So should we figure out ways to at least not be an unnecessary barrier to re-entry for something truly minor and in the past, and for which somebody has paid their debt?”

Editors say the programs have inspired newsrooms to be more deliberate in their current coverage, leaving names out when not relevant and thinking through the consequences of photos in crime stories.

Saun Hough, director of partnerships for Californians for Safety and Justice, an advocacy group that has fought for mass expungements, said reporters often capture a one-sided, law enforcement narrative about an arrest, then fail to follow up. Someone jailed for drug trafficking may ultimately be convicted of possession, or a woman arrested for prostitution could later be confirmed a sex-trafficking survivor, he said. It can take years for cases to be adjudicated, but a report based on an initial arrest might be the story that follows someone through life.

“It creates this constant sense of anxiety that many people live with,” said Hough, noting that crime stories generally lack context about a person’s traumas or struggles that led to the incident. “People wake up every day and pray that they don’t have to talk about what the newspaper wrote about their arrest and relive that. You have this thought in your mind that you’re one Google [search] away from everything being ripped away.”