The Boston Globe has joined a handful of newsrooms around the country doing something once unthinkable: changing old articles because they are ruining a person’s life.

The newspaper on Friday launched its Fresh Start initiative, which allows people to petition to have information about them removed from or added to old stories, to have their names anonymized, or to have the stories delisted from Google searches. The Globe will prioritize stories involving minor crimes and those from long ago, but will also consider ones about “embarrassing” noncriminal behavior.

“Our journalism was never meant to be a permanent obstacle for someone’s future, especially not in cases where a minor crime, transgression, or embarrassing moment follows them at the top of a Google search result forever,” said Jason Tuohey, the Globe’s managing editor for digital.