Former news editor here.
Perhaps the biggest danger in this and other similar policies is not how it is applied today -- removing the names of people accused of minor crimes that have had their records expunged seems like a compassionate policy, given the effects it can have on things like employment prospects -- but in how it may be applied in the future.
The idea that a newspaper archive is a collection of living documents, capable of being amended, rather than fixed snapshots of the past, is a fundamental shift.
My concern is that down the line, more alterations will be permitted to be made, and potentially for less reasonable reasons, and then it's only a matter of time before archival information cannot be trusted, because there may be no way to determine what, if anything, has changed.
That didn't used to be the case. When print copies of newspapers were used for library archives, it was practically impossible to alter all extant hard copies.
But nowadays, unless this content gets indexed and preserved by numerous outside entities, it would be very easy for a newspaper to silently modify its own archives.
I would be more comfortable if the newspaper included, as part of its policy, a requirement that a versioning ledger be published along with any altered archival stories, such as:
* On 2018-10-19, this story was edited to remove the name of the suspect, under our "Right to Be Forgotten" policy. A copy of the original story is available for inspection at our office.
That, at least, would allow people perusing the archives to know whether a story had been altered long after publication, and it would give people who really need the information to acquire it (albeit not easily).