Sure, articles about Lindsay Lohan’s repeat trips to rehabilitation and Brett Favre’s purported sexual peccadilloes generate loads of reader traffic, but do they actually make decent money for the Web sites that publish them?

According to a new analysis, no.

Perfect Market, a company that helps newspapers make their Web sites more profitable, examined the advertising revenue generated from more than 15 million articles from 21 news sites over a three-month period this summer.

Using data from newspapers including The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Orlando Sentinel, Perfect Market found that the most profitable articles were the ones readers were most engaged with. Topics like unemployment, the egg recall and mortgage rates topped the list.