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A lot of talk has been circulating on the impact upon the Wall Street Journal (DJ) if it offers free access to its online Website.

For them its a matter of enduring short-term pain, as ad-supported content would take some time to catch up with the predictable revenue generated from the existing subscription model. It could also dilute the advertising pricing as a more general audience would emerge in contrast to the high-end business visitor that makes up their demographic now.

What's interesting is the way it may affect other existing business properties. For example, what will be the response of the Financial Times, based in London? They have a similar model in that they offer a subsciption-based website as well. Although they are still much more locally and regionally focused than the Journal is.

If the Journal does go free, most believe it would force the Financial Times to do the same. Numis Securities analyst Lorna Tilbian says if the WSJ is offered free it would pressure Pearson (PSON.L) to do the same.

What would be the consequences if this is the case? There the responses are varied

Dresdner Kleinwort's Usman Ghazi says parent company Pearson could take a hit of up to six percent on earnings per share. On the other side, analysts from UBS believe the loss would be minor if it happens based on the Journal having a smaller reach in Europe, and most competiton within Europe is already offered from free Web sites.

"Even assuming a worst case scenario, where all these subscribers were lost, there would only be around a 7 million pound impact, suggesting only around 1 percent downside risk to group profits," UBS media analyst Polo Tang said.

So far this year Finincial Times' online subscribers have grown by 12 percent to reach 97,000. Print circulation grew 1 percent to 450,000.

The overall circulation of the Journal is approximately 1.7 million. When you include Asia and Europe, it grows to about 2.7 million. The Wall Street Journal web site has just under 1 million subscribers.

Pearson CEO Marjorie Scardino is trying to put a spin on this that it won't do much to impact the Financial Times, but I think that's only wishful thinking. The Times is needed to add to Pearson's bottom line much more than the Wall Street Journal is with News Corp. (NWS-A). Rupert Murdoch could sit and take losses for years with the Journal until he battered down the Times if he decides to make it free.

Scardino's comment that the Financial Times is more of a niche paper has some truth to it, and from that angle could weather some of the storm.

If Murdoch drops the subscripton model, he's in essence saying he's going after scale, which would draw the average user from the Financial Times and other competitors who could get the same or in some cases, better content than competitors put out. That's where other publications would suffer.

With the purchase of Dow Jones & Company by News Corp., the entire business media and news industry has immediately become disrupted. Everyone is scrambling to figure out how to respond; from the New York Times (NYT) to news outlets around the world.