What is it about production executives moving over to the publisher’s office?

Last month, it was Andy Ritchie’s turn.

Ritchie, who served as vice president of operations at The Globe and Mail in Toronto and helped coordinate the paper’s printing operations across six commercial plants, was named publisher of the Winnipeg Free Press.

Before that, Marc Kramer was tapped by (New York) Daily News head honcho Mortimer B. Zuckerman to become chief executive officer of the venerable daily.

Pete Zanmiller, meantime, last fall leaped from his post as production director at Florida Today in Melbourne to become publisher of The Herald-Dispatch in Huntington, W. Va. And production veteran Mark Mikolajcyzk started the most recent ball rolling last summer when he was named president and chief executive officer of Detroit Newspaper Partnership LP, the organization that publishes The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press.

Others that have taken the same journey from the press hall to the corner office: Richard Malone at the Chicago Tribune and Bernard Griffin at The Press & Sun-Bulletin in Binghamton, N.Y.  I’m apologizing in advance for others I’ve overlooked.

So how do you go from having ink-stained fingers to sipping fine Champagne and sitting in the owner’s box during major sporting events? (It’s too late now, obviously, but I wonder if Mark had any extra Super Bowl tickets?)

Granted, those making the journey have to broaden their horizons, adding extra operational, budgeting and administrative capabilities to their managerial toolbox. And, as one who has already moved to the top spot told me, “It’s a function of your aspirations. Do you want to take on more responsibilities?”

But think about it. Who better than a production manager to helm the entire newspaper? Editorial gets all the glory, but production is the heart of the newspaper, where the presses roar to life and the conveyors rattle and inserters and conveyors click and clack as they prepare the day’s news and information for distribution.

Press break down? Supplier go out of business? Advertiser unhappy because its 4-color ad was printed in only two colors? That new software causing the inserter to chew up those inserts from the local department store?

Who else are you going to call? Some suit with an MBA who wouldn’t know an eccentric sleeve if it hit him in the face?

Of course not. Production execs have seen the worst of what technology, people and machines can offer and they understand what it takes to get disparate groups headed in the same direction to accomplish a common goal.

To a newspaper, those are valuable traits for a publisher, whether they’re applied in the pressroom or the boardroom.