The internet has a long memory. We’re offering a chance for a Clean Slate.

In this digital world, a single news story can last forever.

That’s usually not an issue; for the sake of the historical record, it’s often a good thing. But in some cases, the weight of that permanence can seem like a digital anchor – that top Google result on a person’s name that never seems to go away, that years-old mistake that tags along and pops up at the most unfortunate times.

Check the Herald-Leader’s website, and you’ll find thousands of stories going back a decade or more, most just a quick Google search away.

Today, we’re beginning a pilot project at the Herald-Leader that offers a chance at a Clean Slate on stories like these.

After 2020’s summer of protests raised important issues and questions in our community and throughout the nation about race, social justice, equity and fairness, we’re re-examining some of our own practices, especially in the context of our increasingly digital world.

Among them, we know that years-old news stories about such things as minor criminal offenses or early news stories about cases that were later dismissed can follow people around in the digital world forever — sometimes making it difficult to find a new job or to make a new beginning in life.

In recent months, other news organizations such as The Boston Globe have launched similar projects to re-examine the ongoing impact of past news coverage.

As the Globe notes: “Globe journalism was never meant to be a permanent obstacle to someone’s success, with the worst decisions and moments in regular people’s lives accessible by a few keystrokes for the rest of time.”

As the Herald-Leader’s editor, I frequently receive emails or phone calls from past story subjects asking us to remove old articles, or at least to take steps so they are not always the top result on Google for someone’s name. Often, these come with heartfelt, even anguished descriptions of the ongoing impact such stories have as someone seeks to get on with life years later. Generally, our policy has been that we do not remove or alter accurate stories from the past, any more than we would go back in time to unpublish a story from the printed newspaper.

It’s time to take another look at this approach.

Under this six-month pilot project for the Herald-Leader, we’re creating a mechanism to let story subjects ask us to review such articles, ones that are more than a year old and do not involve current, ongoing criminal or legal action.

A team of Herald-Leader journalists will review all of these applications, check documents, possibly seek more information and determine whether an old story meets the criteria for action. Some possible outcomes include updating or adding new information or making a story harder to find through a Google search. In rarer cases, we may decide to take a story down from Kentucky.com entirely.

We also may take no action, depending on what we find and based on our editorial discretion. Decisions will be made by a group of Herald-Leader journalists, with input from senior journalists and editors in McClatchy, our parent company. For example, cases involving public figures or serious crimes or offenses are unlikely to meet the threshold for action (though we will still review these applications).

Again, we’re not talking about news stories involving active, ongoing legal or criminal cases, nor are we talking about coverage that people simply disliked or found controversial. We’re also not talking about removing any stories from our permanent newspaper archive or research sites that access it.

Here’s one small example of what we are talking about: A minor arrest that we covered years ago, without follow-up coverage when the person was later acquitted, or the case later dismissed or even expunged.

This project is aimed specifically at such stories that live on, through our site and through search engines, and may keep someone from getting a fair shake much later as they try to move on with life.

If you’re interested in applying, the application form can be found here.

We will review your application as quickly as possible, do additional research as needed and get back in touch with you. In some cases, a member of the Herald-Leader staff may reach out for additional information, documents or materials.

We’re not entirely sure what to expect as we launch this initiative, nor is it possible to predict every possible outcome since details can differ greatly from case to case. That’s part of the point of this pilot project, and we’re eager to find out more and share what we learn.