How Pop Crave and Pop Base became major news sources in the 2024 presidential election

Among the big winners of this election season? Pop-culture news aggregators, which have become a source of political updates for their millions of followers.

On the afternoon of September 15, when news began to break about a second assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, one upstart celebrity news aggregator beat most major news organizations to the punch. Pop Crave, a pop culture-focused account with 1.8 million followers, posted that Trump was unharmed by the attempt at 2:41—well before it was shared by the accounts of the Associated Press (2:45 p.m.), CNN (3:10 p.m.), NBC News (3:13 p.m.), and The New York Times (3:21 p.m.). The account’s first post after the Trump news was a video of Taylor Swift arriving at Kansas Chiefs game to cheer on boyfriend Travis Kelce.