diff --git a/newsplease/helper_classes/parse_crawler.py b/newsplease/helper_classes/parse_crawler.py
index b70729e5..4d257624 100644
--- a/newsplease/helper_classes/parse_crawler.py
+++ b/newsplease/helper_classes/parse_crawler.py
@@ -74,9 +74,9 @@ def pass_to_pipeline(
         article["html_title"] = extracted_title.encode("utf-8")
 
         if rss_title is None:
-            article["rss_title"] = "NULL".encode("utf-8")
+            article["rss_title"] = "NULL"
         else:
-            article["rss_title"] = rss_title.encode("utf-8")
+            article["rss_title"] = rss_title
         article["spider_response"] = response
         article["article_title"] = "NULL"
         article["article_description"] = "NULL"