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The Washington Post's Rich Leiby and Sally Squires are taking the paper's buyout, we hear.

Employees taking the buyout have a 7 day "cooling off period" of sorts to reconsider and rescind taking the buyout.

We've heard that some employees are submitting signed papers while they scramble to find jobs and that, if the job offers don't land by the 22nd, they'll pull back the papers.

More names were hearing who are taking the paper's buyout package:

Mike Judge: Features copy desk chief
Jeanne Maglaty: Style copy editor
Christine Garsson: Deputy News Editor/Extras
Pat Myers: Style copy editor; queen of the Style Invitational

FishbowlDC has learned that Dan Balz will not take the buyout, although he had considered it. He tells us that he "will continue to do what I do here at the Post -- quite happily, I should add. ... The Post is a great institution."

What will the final numbers be? More than 100? That looks like a very real possibility. And, of course, how will the Post announce the departures? Last time, they reported some of the names, but not all.

Other questions: Will all of this make the paper revisit its "let's fold some sections" idea? Could newsrooms get merged? Will there be -- gasp! -- layoffs? (There are still rumors that the paper might have some if they don't hit the target number through the recent round of buyoffs...and that target number is more about $$ than body count).

What are you hearing Posties?

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That's a big rumor in the Washington Post's newsroom right now. There's a lot of buzz about a big announcement that's expected to land Thursday -- deadline day for filing buyout paperwork, by the way -- and the prevailing rumor is that it has something to do with Len Downie finally announcing that he's leaving.

Posties, drop us a line or note in our tips box:

>UPDATE: Erik Wemple heard similar rumors and called Downie last night:

Last night, Washington City Paper called Downie to ask about this big, huge, major announcement on Thursday. His response: "There's no announcement coming on Thursday."

Maybe Friday?

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The Style section is like the Washington Post's version of Keith Olbermann: You either love it, or hate it. Erik Wemple chimed in on the Style section last week, prompting the Washington Post's Deneen Brown to write this internal note to her Style colleagues, obtained by FishbowlDC, to staffers:

Style is a great section. It is as great today as it was yesterday. The talent in Style is tremendous. Each writer has a distinctive voice. It is the collective of those voices that makes it a great. We all know that writing is subjective. There will be those who love us and those who think otherwise. In the meantime, I say we must continue to write, pushing our writing and styles to the very edge.

Nikki Giovanni once said: "You must do, say, write that which you belive to be true. What others think can be of no consequence."

And this is what Margaret Atwood writes about writing with confidence: "The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person and not even by yourself at some later date, otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it."