Edelman Public Relations, The Horn Group, and Metzger Associates are the top-rated technology public relations firms according to journalists covering the sector.

A new survey conducted by PRSourceCode asked 1,000 U.S. based IT sector journalists to rate public relations firms on five criteria: overall performance; responsiveness; industry knowledge; accuracy of information provided; and adding value to the journalist-IT organization relationship.

Edelman was named best large technology PR firm, beating out O’Keeffe & Company, Waggener Edstrom, Weber Shandwick, and Burson-Marsteller. Horn Group was the best midsize PR firm, ahead of Lewis PR, Access Communications, The Hoffman Agency and OutCast Communications. Metzger won the small firm category, beating out The Simon Group, Landis Communications, Launch Squad, and Ackerman PR.

On responsiveness, the winners were Schwartz Communications, Horn, and Simon Group; on industry knowledge, Edelman, Horn and Metzger took top honors; on accuracy, Waggener Edstrom, OutCast and Metzger were the leaders; and on adding value, Wagg Ed, Horn, and Launch Squad topped the poll.

Most of the verbatim quotes from journalists, not surprisingly, emphasized the negatives:
• “Some reps are persistent to the point of aggravation. They seem overwhelmed and uninformed at the same time. Not an enjoyable combination.”—InfoWorld
• “Some days, I can get three calls from three different account reps, all asking the same question, and most of them are too dim to get the sarcasm that inevitably starts to creep into my voice. I’ve also had to explain to them what the company they represent actually does.”—Customer Inter@ction Solutions
• “I recently got a ping from a PR rep and I replied, because it happened to be a subject I was doing a story on. We talked, and she agreed to find me info. The next day, she e-mailed me the identical pitch, again introducing herself and clearly not remembering me at all. I e-mailed back reminding her we had spoken, and she apologized. The next day -yep, you guessed it -a third identical copy of the same pitch. Sheesh.”—Wireless Week

“Every agency’s most important clients are journalists,” says Steven Smith, general manager of PRSourceCode. “Agencies and their corporate clients need to understand how agencies are performing in serving journalists.”