The way Simon Crerar tells it, if you were starting a new publishing business for the twenty-first century without the baggage of legacy newspapers, it would look a lot like Buzzfeed.

Of course, there's a price to be paid, and the currency appears to be puppies and kittens. But I still like the idea of a once-hallowed divide between 'church and state', the division between business and journalism, coupled with huge audience engagement and response - even if it's through emoti-like badges - and of course, the digital-era revenue, which comes from native advertising.

Amazingly in Australia, where editor Crerar is part of a 30-strong team, they manage to do that with 27 journos and three commercial staff, most in their 20s.

Speaking at Publish Asia in Manila, Crerar tells of the chat app's 200 million monthly uniques, and its technology-focussed origins courtesy of HuffPost cofounder Jonah Peretti who, he says, "likes cats, dogs and cafes".

And having built its audience country-by-country, Buzzfeed is also chasing credibility with serious investigative journalism - even a political staffer in Canberra's Parliament House - and unique, sometimes long-form content. "You can have a serious side and still LOL," says Crerar.

The fast-growing US-headquartered mobile publisher is also working to conquer the world, having taken its product first to the UK and (two years ago) Australia, where it is now in the top ten. Offices in Mumbai and Tokyo are part of an Asia-Pacific push, and Crerar has a long list of other countries they're looking at.

He's already got some of these markets worked out: "Aussies are obsessed with race and sexuality, Indians love to be outraged, and the Japanese are wonderfully weird and love celebrating that among themselves," he says.

Sites produce varying amounts of video themselves, but are backed up by a huge studio in Los Angeles with 150 producers, helping drive three billion video views a month.

"Very much social," it has 108 million Facebook 'likes', 7.5 million on Instagram, and six million Twitter followers. Stats show a huge video spike, "so big we're not disclosing it".

If you want to emulate the Buzzfeed success, you'll need to build a lot of your own tech: "Ownership of tech is important," Crerar says.

Plus a predisposition to lists, big in Australia and India and "mega-viral", and recognize the value of local pride, surprises (even in "a country where snakes come out of the ceiling"), hunger (for food), thirst (for news) and that everyone and every country is different.

The business model is based on revenue from branded content and videos for brands... and yes, it's apparently OK to report Telstra's f**k-ups on one side while taking their marketing money on the other. The investment in quality content and investigative journalism is part of a pitch for equality with long-established brands with huge trust, and includes a fact-checking feature. "We crowd source, but bust hoaxes and are good at sniffing that out," he says.

Users are encouraged to react to content with those badges, a big contrast to The Times, where Crerar once worked and "you only got a letter when you stuffed up".

If you want a job with Buzzfeed, you'll need to be funny, fit into the age-group above, get the internet, have the same rigour as traditional journalists but understand sharing.

"We're trying to find what a twenty-first century newspaper looks like," he says.

But did I say no baggage? Even Buzzfeed has a past it apparently has to live with... and it's those kitten videos, these from the Australian team.

Peter Coleman