More on Mark Plotkin's exit from WTOP

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The Washington Post did a follow-up on long-time WTOP-FM DC political commentator Mark Plotkin’s recent firing. According to the story, Plotkin chewed out a small crew of Latino janitors performing cleaning services at WTOP’s office building. When he arrived at the station, Plotkin found that a door to the stairwell wasn’t opening, so he then walked into an open elevator, only to find that it was out of service. So he went off at the cleaning crew.


The following day, Plotkin again yelled at a cleaning crew member. Said The Post’s Wemple: “Plotkin stepped over the line with cleaning contractors, four sources say. Mark Plotkin’s ouster from his perch of nearly 10 years as a commentator at WTOP radio stemmed from his volcanic temper. That we know. He’d blow up at colleagues in the newsroom all the time. That we know as well.

But just what prompted the station to announce a “parting of ways” with an unsentimental three-line statement? That we didn’t know.

The skinny: It wasn’t a newsroom blowup. It was a lobby blowup. According to four sources, Plotkin chewed out the small crew of Latino workers who perform cleaning services at WTOP’s office building.

The trouble started three days earlier, on Jan. 23. That afternoon, Plotkin rolled into the lobby of the building at Wisconsin and Idaho Avenues NW that houses WTOP. There were power troubles at the building and the lobby was dark. The D.C. statehood champion was trying to get upstairs to the radio station’s offices but ran into obstacles: The door to the stairwell wasn’t opening, not a good situation for Plotkin — a stairs guy all the way. He then walked into an open elevator, only to find that it was out of service.

So he raged, according to the sources (including eyewitnesses) — all swear words and nastiness, directed at a cleaning crew that just happened to find itself in Plotkin’s line of fire. As it turned out, one of the elevators was in working order.

The explosion wasn’t enough to trigger a complaint by the cleaning crew. It carried on as usual, until the next afternoon. That’s when Plotkin took to yelling at a cleaning crew member again, this time just outside the building’s doors, the sources say. Exactly what had provoked Plotkin this time isn’t clear. Following the encounter, a representative of the team approached WTOP to apprise the station of its issues with Plotkin.

The sequence of events suggests that WTOP could handle Plotkin exploding at fellow journalists; tolerating the mood swings of highly talented and mercurial individuals, after all, is a specialty of any good news organization. Yet when Plotkin took to screaming at the people who pick up after him, the radio station apparently decided that a line had been crossed.”