There’s lots of talk around at the moment about the state of publishing. From the potential death of The Observer to rapidly falling television advertising revenues, the future for the traditional media model looks pretty bleak. So what’s the answer? Talking – or more specifically conversation – that’s what.

Engagement is one of those buzz words that is bandied around a lot. But whether or not you like it or not, engagement is what matters. Beware though, it’s not the kind of engagement that simply involves a few million readers buying a newspaper; it needs to go much further than that.

I work for Sift Media, a B2B publisher which has been doing the social media thing for 13 years. Not that it was called social media in 1996.

Our nine websites (including BusinessZone.co.uk and UK Business Forums which I look after) are all community driven. The community sets the agenda and the community writes much of the content.

But even a company which has engaged with millions of professionals online for more than a decade has to move with the times and we’re now taking it one step further. As well as engaging with our members editorially we also encourage commercial partners (yep advertisers!) to engage. Rather than just sticking a banner ad at the top of the page we get them involved in the conversation with their target market. And that’s not just within our own communities but also on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and all the other networks that matter.

In a very interesting piece earlier this week in The Guardian, Simon Jenkins said the traditional media needs to embrace live events and make the publishing process a physical experience for readers, listeners and viewers. 

Backing up Jenkins’ argument, we’re seeing an increased interest in face-to-face engagement. Take The Pitch for example. The Dragons’ Den-style event in which entrepreneurs present their business to a panel of investors and other experts has been massively successful both editorially and commercial. Interestingly, The Pitch is a new event in 2009, recession year.

All of these issues and more are discussed in the video below featuring my managing editor Steve Roth and Lawrence Clarke, from Sift Media’s sister company SiftGroups. The video is 30 minutes long but it’s well worth watching.

They may have had the graveyard shift when it came to panellists at yesterday’s Media140 event but that didn’t stop the final team of experts raising some excellent points about the impact on journalism of Twitter and other microblogging networks.

Chaired by social media consultant Joanne Jacobs, Simon Grice, Christian Payne, Paul Bradshaw and Joanna Geary debated an issue which has got many journalists talking – the future of local news.

It can be disputed that the UK’s local and regional press is suffering. Circulations are down as people turn to the web for news. And even among those locals which do have an internet presence, many have been criticised for not exploiting modern technology as well as they could be.

But Twitter offers a massive opportunity for a local press revival.

People are graving news like never before and are using networks like Twitter to get it. Despite the progress of globalisation, the public still wants to know what’s going on down the road and around the corner.

Simon Grice made an excellent point during the panel debate. He related how while the traditional ‘cat stuck up tree’ story may be ridiculed, such tales are still of interest to those who live in the local area.

Grice, who has set up BeLocal – a Twitter service which allows users to receives local news via direct messages- related how a report in the East Anglian Times – Cat gets stuck in car wheel – sent via the tool caused great interest in his local pub. Why? Because it was in their local area and they knew the woman who owned the cat. To them, it was news.

That isn’t to say that the skills 21st century local reporters need to employ are massively new. Like Joanna Geary, now at The Times Online and formerly of the Birmingham Post, said; Twitter is simply another way of engaging with a community local journalists should already have been engaging with in the first place.

The local press has become complacent. Just because a newspaper has been around for 100 years isn’t enough any more when there are thousands of other instant, real-time resources for the public to turn to for news.

It’s up to local reporters to engage with the modern times.

Simon Grice’s attempt is to be admired. I signed up by following @BeLocal and DMing my postcode. Within seconds I received links to local weather reports and news stories from within five miles of where I live. I even had my own ‘cat up a tree’ story - Deer bursts through house window.

BeLocal is certainly a step in the right direction but I think it still has some way to go. There’s little engagement on the actual Twitter feed – no update since 7th April at the time of writing – and automatic following and direct messaging feels somewhat impersonal but it’s definitely a sign of good things to come.

As well as seeking out and distributing the stories local people grave in the format they want, reporters should also be using social networks to seek out the copy local residents themselves can provide. And perhaps Twitter could also finally provide the holy grail the local press has been looking for - a new revenue model!

Twitter and networks like it have had a profound affect on the way news is generated and journalists and PRs interact. You’ve only got to look at Barak Obama’s election, the terrorist attacks in Mumbai and the Hudson River plane crash to realise how widespread an impact social media is having and its ability to equip ordinary citizens with the tools required to break news ahead of traditional media outlets.

As a journalist, I’m having to think very differently about my job, while PRs are having to think differently about how they communicate with me to get the word out about their clients.

All these issues and more will be debated tomorrow from 2.30pm at Media140, the UK’s first event focusing on microblogging and its impact on the media.

I’m an official Media140 blogger and I’ll be posting here tomorrow afternoon and also via my Twitter feed.

For more information about Media140, have a look at the event website.