But will pitch guidelines help? I don’t know. Etiquette is learned via trial and error. Can we legislate politeness? No, no matter what, there will always be people who are unaware of how they sound. Better to call it out, just as you did, in response to poor judgment.

Mack introduced me last year to the idea of a Twitter landing page (originally adopted by @Pistachio Laura Fitton, I believe). A Twitter landing page may be the best Twitter/blog idea I’ve ever seen — it just makes sense. And what better place to put a little blurb that explains how to pitch to me?

I got followed by people who just searched on keyword “dog” so much so that I put up a twitter follow policy. http://www.dogwalkblog.com/twitter-follow-policy/ If someone follows me because they have some dog crap to sell, I do not feel the slightest obligation to follow them as they have obviously NOT read the blog. It is far from a “dog blog.”

You have a long enough reach that you should probably have a pitch policy. Short and including an email address for stuff like that. But, with a disclaimer that if you are not interested, no reply will be forthcoming. People think because they sent an email, you owe a reply. You don’t, regardless of what the “Internet elites” think. Unless they pay you, of course. :-)