A former editor of People magazine had some hard-and-fast rules: young is better than old, pretty is better than ugly, television is better than music, music is better than movies, movies are better than sports.

And anything is better than politics.

Apparently that rule does not apply to the high-drama presidential campaign of 2008, judging by the unprecedented number of pages in People and other celebrity magazines devoted to coverage of the presidential candidates, along with their spouses, children, BlackBerries, wardrobes, iPods and travel Bibles.

“People are craving it,” said Larry Hackett, People’s managing editor. ``So we’re covering it more than ever.”

Behold the symbiotic relationship that has developed between the campaigns and the entertainment press. Some of the most celebrity-centric media outlets have added a heavy dose of political news to space normally devoted to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

And the candidates have batted their eyelashes back, obligingly granting interviews, posing for pictures and writing personal essays.

Driving all of it, editors and campaign aides say, is the appetite for news on presidential candidates and their families. In some corners it is simply seen as entertainment.

“It’s the greatest reality show on television,” said Charles Lachman, the executive producer of Inside Edition, the syndicated entertainment newsmagazine. People’s fiercest competitor, US Weekly, has published essays by Bill Clinton, Michelle Obama, interviews with Hillary Rodham Clinton and, , and a three-page spread on ‘Barack Obama: Is He Really Just Like Us?’ (The answer: he really is!)

When Cindy McCain first discussed rumours of an extramarital affair by her husband, she did so in an interview with Nancy O’Dell of the TV show Access Hollywood. When John and Elizabeth Edwards resurfaced for their first joint interview after he dropped out of the presidential race, they chose to do so in People magazine.

Not since John F. Kennedy posed for Life magazine during the 1960 campaign have the entertainment media been so infatuated with a presidential campaign.

“It is because they view the candidates as celebrities.” said Samir Husni, the chairman of the journalism department at the University of Mississippi. It is also because having a woman and a young, photogenic man in the race hits the right demographic notes—the vast majority of readers of US Weekly are women.

Editors and producers say that the readership and viewership numbers reveal that the demand for politics coverage has increased as the race continues. Inside Edition runs at least one political story every day because the ratings are so high for those segments.

Campaign advisers for both the Democrats and Republicans said the resulting coverage shows the candidate’s softer, funnier, more personal side.

“The interviews are an important way to reach a lot of voters who may not be watching the Sunday shows,” Mr. Carson said. It also helps when a typical question, as Clinton was asked recently by Entertainment Tonight, is about how she manages to “look so good in the morning.”)