diff --git a/src/common/logger.py b/src/common/logger.py
index 698e11f..79741ac 100644
--- a/src/common/logger.py
+++ b/src/common/logger.py
@@ -755,6 +755,7 @@ class Logger:
 		# if there's a need to do more gzip, put that to a function
 		string = StringIO()
 		gzip = GzipFile(fileobj=string, mode='w')
+		data = str(data) # the gzip module can't handle unicode objects
 		gzip.write(data)
 		gzip.close()
 		data = string.getvalue()