One downside of paywalls: Where does your growth come from?

paidContent reporting:
Anyone who has been following the debate around newspaper paywalls probably knows I am not a big fan of them as a strategy, for a number of reasons. While I admit they can bring in additional cash — and that can make a big difference for companies that have seen their revenue decline precipitously over the past few years — I still see them as problematic. Alan Mutter, a former journalist and veteran technology CEO, puts his finger on one big problem: namely, that they are focused more on keeping existing readers rather than finding new ones.
As Mutter (who likes to call himself the “Newsosaur”) puts it in his blog post, paywalls or subscription plans — which have been increasing in popularity to the point where a majority of the large papers in the United States now have them — seem like a great deal on the face of it. You put up a pay barrier, allow some leaks through social media, pick the number of pages that your pay “meter” accepts before triggering the demand for payment, and then sit back and let the extra revenue roll in. But as Mutter notes, it’s not quite that simple:
“All good? Not necessarily. The reason to worry about paywalls is that they severely limit the prospects of developing a wider audience for newspapers at a time publishers need – more than ever – to attract readers among the digitally native generations that represent a growing proportion of the adult population.”
http://paidcontent.org/2013/04/10/one-downside-of-paywalls-where-does-your-growth-come-from/