For decades, the digital publishing model rested on a clear value exchange: search engines indexed original reporting in return for audience referral traffic. Today, as AI platforms summarize and process content directly without directing users back to the source, this foundational economic structure is rapidly destabilizing.
To examine how media organizations can establish sustainable content permissions rather than defaulting to tech resistance, Media Party Barcelona—taking place on September 7–8 at CaixaForum—will feature cybersecurity authority and Cloudflare VP Chema Alonso as a keynote speaker.
About Chema Alonso
Chema Alonso is one of Spain’s best-known cybersecurity and digital infrastructure figures—a PhD, ethical hacker, and entrepreneur who currently serves as VP, Head of International Development at Cloudflare.
Prior to Cloudflare, he spent years as Chief Digital Officer at Telefónica and founded the security firms ElevenPaths and Informática 64. He speaks widely around the world on the future of the open internet.
Keynote at Media Party
Chema’s upcoming session will directly address two key themes: AI & Journalism and Media Business Models.
Keynote: From Extraction to Exchange: Content Markets for the Agentic Internet
The web’s founding bargain — automated discovery was tolerated because it sent audiences back to publishers and creators — is breaking as AI systems summarise, train on and ground their answers in human content while routing readers away from the source. Blunt tools like robots.txt can’t tell search, training and agentic use apart (Cloudflare data: nearly 90% of AI-crawler requests are for training or mixed purposes, not search).
The fix isn’t to block AI but to rebuild the bargain with a permissions layer — granular control for creators and a scalable path to permissioned content for AI developers — keeping the information ecosystem diverse, competitive and trustworthy.
Join the Discussion in Barcelona
As artificial intelligence fundamentally restructures content distribution and audience discovery, Chema Alonso’s technical and strategic perspective offers a critical framework for media executives, digital publishers, and technical leaders alike.
Join the conversation at Media Party Barcelona on September 7–8 at CaixaForum to explore how media organizations can navigate the future of digital infrastructure and news business models.
