The New York Times’s ombudsman comes out against the Times’s practice of airbrushing its articles:
My preference would be that The Times do more to document and retain significant changes and corrections like those I have described. It has a policy against removing material from its archive (except in rare cases), on the principle that the record should be preserved. The Times should clarify its policy on replacing stories online, which looks like de facto removal to me, and offer the public a better-documented archive that includes all significant versions and all corrections. . .
Right now, tracking changes is not a priority at The Times. As Ms. Abramson told me, it’s unrealistic to preserve an “immutable, permanent record of everything we have done.”
There is a saying that I think is appropriate here: That which has been done, can be done. Lots of blogs and newspapers manage to keep a fairly complete record by the simple expedient of not replacing their stories. Barring that, maintaining a change history is technologically quite feasible. For instance, as an Instapundit reader points out, Wikipedia manages to do so, and in a much more difficult setting.
It’s just a matter of wanting to do it.
Internet Scofflaw 