A student on University College Falmouth’s MA course in international journalism has struck gold by getting himself a paid job with the Guardian newspaper.

Robert Moulin was a qualified accountant with over 20 years’ experience before he decided on a career change.

His past experiences have served him well, however, and he has now been asked to work on a major series of articles on corporation taxation for the Guardian.

The opportunity came about after Mr Moulin went to the 2008 Guardian student media conference at the end of last year.

It was one of the speakers, freelance investigate journalist Nick Davies, who spoke about getting as much practical experience as possible and being persistent that encouraged Mr Moulin to speak to the Guardian’s deputy editor and ask for work experience.

A meeting with the business editor led to Mr Moulin being offered the chance to help the newspaper’s chief investigative journalist, David Leigh, on The Tax Gap – a major investigation that ran over twelve days in print and online.

Mr Moulin said: “Helping out with this project has been a terrific experience. To use my financial knowledge in a journalistic environment has been really rewarding, and to see how a paper comes together piece by piece was great.”

Mr Moulin will now take part in work experience with the Guardian’s business team in Easter.