Are they still relevant? Everyone's a critic.

Obviously the Internet has played a big role in this shift. It has promoted a democratization of opinion in which solo bloggers -- most famously Matt Drudge -- can outstrip mammoth news organizations. Whenever I spend time with young students, I see an even more intriguing concept at work. Although they are heavily influenced by peer group reaction to films or music, they do listen to critics, but largely as a group, not as individual brands. The age of the singular critical voice is ending -- people prefer the wisdom of a community.

Having just spent an evening with students studying entertainment reporting at the USC School of Journalism, I asked them Friday for their take on critics. Nearly everyone said that when they want to read up on a film, they often go to metacritic.com or rottentomatoes.com, websites that offer a healthy sample of critical consensus. As student Victor Farfan put it: "They put all the reviews in one easy, convenient, conglomerated source that gives you a breadth of opinions from trusted sources and some less familiar ones."

Other students acknowledge that they put little stock in critical opinion, lumping it in with the cascade of hype that accompanies today's entertainment. "We tend to be wary of anything that seems over-hyped, whether it's by critics or over-advertising," said Courtney Lear. "Personally, I trust certain actors, artists or directors from previous experiences. The Arcade Fire is playing in Hollywood? Their last album rocked my socks off. When do tickets go on sale? They've already gained my trust."

For a generation that lives on the Web, even the most eloquent critics are distant thunder, rarely promoted well on newspaper websites and often reluctant to use blogs as a platform to spread their gospel. Even among savvy journalism students, it's hard to find anyone who knows any critics by name.

Of course, it's not only the Web that is putting nails in the coffin. When it comes to film, no one has done a better job of robbing critics of credibility than the movie studios themselves, whose blurb ads are a thoroughly corrupt and cynical invention that has done more to devalue critics than any incursion from the Internet. The ads attempt to lull the filmgoer into briefly putting one thought into their head: "Maybe that piece of junk isn't really that bad."