Hard News Pays

The Vault Index is a new ranking of the 10 most valuable topics for news publishers. It finds that while the Lindsay Lohan sentencing and other celebrity coverage drove significant online traffic for major news publishers, articles about unemployment benefits, the Gulf oil spill, mortgage rates and other serious topics were the top-earning news topics based on advertising revenue per page view.

"This data proves that serious journalism does pay," said Julie Schoenfeld, CEO of Perfect Market. "The great insight unveiled by the Vault Index is that the stories with real revenue opportunity for news organizations today are not always, as it turns out, celebrity scandals but difficult subjects that affect people's lives."