Update: We have added a page to our Wiki that serves as a running list of PR firms that blog.  If you aren't listed, please feel free to edit the Wiki and add yourself.  Original post follows.

For years I've watched some of the best, brightest and biggest PR firms in the world get the web wrong. Traditionally, most large PR firms have viewed the web as a designers medium, housing their interactive capability in their creative department. The design folks would come in and build a website, and then move on to their next project like they would if they were designing a postcard. The result is website as online brochure. Slick and shallow. The other result is PR firms full of account managers that don't know much about the Internet. Due to the blog craze, I think a light has gone off for many large PR firms and, at the very least, they are talking about the web differently. But given what I've observed over the years, I'm skeptical. As Mark Rose writes in this piece, "Big PR agencies are like super tankers; they are set on their course and they take a super effort to navigate a new direction." After reading this post from last summer, I decided to do a quick survey of the 20 largest PR firms (adjusted down to 18 since two of the firms on the list I have were acquired) and see if they had blogs on their own corporate sites. Here's what I found:

• Four of the 18 firms have fully functioning blogs that have been updated in the last two months (Burson Marstellar, Edelman, Hill & Knowlton and The MWW Group).
• Twelve of the 18 firms didn't have a blog that I could locate through a Google search or off of their main corporate sites (APCO, Brodeur, Cohn & Wolf, Fleishman-Hillard, Golin Harris, Huntsworth, Ketchum, Manning Selvage & Lee, Ogilvy, Porter Novelli, Ruder Finn and Weber Shandwick).*
• Two firms put up blogs but have neglected them (Schwartz Communcations and Waggenner Edstrom).

I'm not one of those people who believes that every company needs a blog. Not having a blog is preferable to having a bad blog. For some companies, it just doesn't make sense. I also know that many of these firms that don't have corporate blogs have individual employees that maintain personal blogs. But I do think the decision to blog makes a powerful statement about where your priorities are and where you think the world is going. And I think its obvious that the ability to implement a successful blogging strategy for yourself is a pretty good indication you can implement one for a client. *Note that Ketchum has this site which looks like a blog but is really a marketing piece and Ogilvy has this list of blogs. Update: I found that the Horn Group has a blog as well. I updated the post here with more data. Technorati Tags: PR Edelman Burson Fleishman Hill & Knowlton