Rochelle Riley, an influential columnist at the Detroit Free Press since 2000, is among eight newsroom staffers who volunteered to take buyouts as part of a corporate cost-cutting initiative.

Free Press Editor and Vice President Peter Bhatia confirmed to Crain's the number of volunteers, which was enough to stave off involuntary layoffs. He declined to name who else volunteered.

He did confirm that Perry Farrell, a Free Press sportswriter since 1988, took an early-retirement offer last year, and cartoonist Mike Thompson will now work for McLean, Va.-based Gannett Co. Inc., the Free Press' corporate owner.

Newspaper management had told the newsroom union that it planned lay off up to seven Newspaper Guild staffers, including four of the Free Press' 41 reporters, if enough employees didn't volunteer to take a buyout offer.

Riley has won numerous local and national column-writing awards since going to the Free Press after a career that included stops as an editor or reporter at The Washington Post, The Dallas Morning News, the Dallas Times Herald and Louisville Courier-Journal. She was enshrined in the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame in 2016.

Riley spoke briefly with Crain's on Friday afternoon, saying she made her decision to take the voluntary layoff to help colleague keep their jobs. She's mulled taking other offers in recent years, but finally opted for it this time as she considers the next phase of her life and career – things she says she'll announce soon. She termed the recent weeks inside the Free Press as "devastatingly sad" as the prospect of job losses loomed.

"It was just time," she said. "It's been an awesome, awesome ride."

Riley said she came to Detroit 18 years ago with plans to stay just two years before heading to Los Angeles.

Riley and Farrell are African-Americans, meaning their departures leave the newsroom's reporting and columnist ranks thinner of African-American journalists in a city that's overwhelmingly black. Newsroom diversity is an ongoing newspaper industry conversation in Detroit and nationally.

The Detroit News, which has a separate newsroom and ownership but shares business functions such as ad sales and printing with the Free Press, is also in the process of cutting newsroom positions, but no details have been disclosed. One longtime sportswriter at The News, Gregg Krupa, is known to have been reassigned to the metro desk, and it's believed that senior staffers may have had their salaries cut.

Both Detroit newspapers have unionized newsrooms through the Detroit Newspaper Guild Local 34022, which is engaged in contract talks for its members. Each newsroom's three-year deal expires in February.

Job cuts are a major talking point in the industry. Detroit's dailies have seen hundreds of journalists depart via early-retirements, buyouts and layoffs over the past dozen years, which matches the wider industry trend as newspapers grapple with declining revenue from advertising and audience lost to online sources.

Gannett in October offered voluntary buyouts to staffers age 55 and older who have at least 15 years with the company, which has about 100 newspapers anchored by flagship USA Today. Gannett didn't get enough veteran employees to volunteer to exit the company, so in December it assigned each newspaper a target to reach locally via more volunteers or layoffs. The Freep's volunteer deadline was Jan. 17; it was Jan. 12 at The News.

In a memo to staff, Bhatia outlined how the newspaper will deal with the staff reductions, which account for more than the eight volunteers.

"Senior managers will be meeting next week to contemplate the reshaping of the newsroom to get at coverage topics we must and how we best organize to run a smaller newsroom. Through unfilled openings, early retirement and layoff volunteers we will lose at least 11 positions," he wrote. "Our goals remain the same: create unique, in-depth journalism of significant impact and grow our digital audience. We must do more in both areas this year. I look to our auto reporters as a model. Audience there is up more than 90 percent year over year and we break story after story on the automakers as well as doing great investigative work such as the Death on Foot project."

His memo also touched on expenses.

"As you'd figure, the 2019 budget is extremely tight. We've shaved expenses as much as we could to protect jobs. Please don't assume that something we have paid for in the past will automatically be paid for now. This ranges from subscriptions/dues and equipment/supplies to travel, meals and conferences. We need to hoard our non-payroll funds for news coverage," he wrote.