Seriously, it has been a while since I have seen a comment as uncharitable as that one at the top of the HN comments.
This move is simply a recognition that many of these stories about minor crimes can have a long lasting impact because of the SEO of a site like The Boston Globe's and the power of Google. That negative impact likely does a net harm to society as a whole as it actively works against rehabilitation efforts by serving as a scarlet letter for this person's entire life. Working to reduce that by removing these pages when they are no longer newsworthy isn't censorship, affirmative action, or anything else that OP it stating or hinting at. I truly don't understand being against a decision like this on the merits.
I don't see any intent to do any censorship or rewriting history here. It looks like the Boston Globe wants to make sure their past coverage doesn't produce unintended consequences from naive searches of people's names on the Internet. What do you think they're trying to do?