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'Bild' editor racks up €42,000 in roaming charges

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'Bild' editor racks up €42,000 in roaming charges
Just a'bloggin! Photo: DPA

Kai Diekmann, the editor-in-chief of Germany's sensationalist daily Bild, racked up €42,000 in wireless roaming charges after blogging from abroad while on vacation. Despite a personal appeal to the head of Deutsche Telekom his newspaper still had to pay up.

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The horrific roaming fees were first reported this week by media sector magazine Kontakter.

On Tuesday, Diekmann confirmed that the charges stemmed from several days in Morocco last winter, when he published a “100-day blog.”

“Such things happen when an editor-in-chief blogs on holiday,” he told Munich daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. “But the amount stunned me of course.”

Diekmann said he then approached Deutsche Telekom CEO René Obermann after a speech he gave at a Bild business conference when questions from the public were allowed.

“I inquired about roaming charges in general and specifically about my own,” he told the paper.

But Obermann offered no special deals for the controversial newspaper man. Instead he reminded Diekmann in front of the crowd that Bild publisher Axel Springer was still a normal customer.

“That means, get in line,” Diekmann told the paper.

Fortunately for Diekmann, his employer picked up the huge bill in the end.

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