The Plug is a subscription based digital news and insights platform providing trends, analysis, and distinctive journalism on the Black innovation economy and is part of the Columbia-IBM Center for Blockchain and Data Transparency accelerator 2021 cohort. Its founder Sherrell Dorsey is a Columbia Journalism School alumna.
Malcolm X is quoted to have said “the media’s the most powerful entity on Earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent.” The media plays a pivotal role in shaping our perceptions of the world and of different groups of people. When analyzing media depictions of Black people, pervasive issues like the white savior narrative and anti-black stereotypes are common. In addition to media and Hollywood representation (or rather misrepresentation), when we think of experts, our minds are wired to imagine white men. This leads to biases not only in how stories are covered but also in who we deem as worthy of profiling. With an understanding of this issue in mind, The Plug was born. The Plug was created with this purpose in mind: “our stories move beyond popular deficit narratives to show the substantive ways that Black people are affected by and engaged with the innovation economy.” Launched in 2016, The Plug provides a daily tech newsletter that highlights news about Black tech trends and analyses that aren’t regularly examined in the media currently. Forbes sat down with The Plug founder, Sherrell Dorsey, to talk about the platform and catalyst to create it, as well as the impact it’s been having thus far.