If most university students studying film criticism can’t even name a single working movie critic, are we really overestimating the importance of their jobs? Young people might cruise through Entertainment Weekly to see what’s at the cineplex this weekend, but they aren’t noting the bylines. WORSE: They aren’t even reading cinema blogs!

The death toll is ringing, writes Variety’s Anne Thompson, and we’re on the verge of displacing nearly all thumbs-uppers and thumbs-downers. Netflix recommendations are stand-ins for respected voices of cultural reason. And with newspapers practically running on fumes, or so their publishers would have you believe, the first jobs to get axed are in the arts-culture sections.

Over the past two years, newspapers have forced out or pushed into early retirement some 28 critics. Losing major reviewers are Detroit (the Free-Press never replaced Terry Lawson), Atlanta, Denver, Tampa and Fort Lauderdale. Tribune Company newspapers lost Michael Wilmington from the Chicago Tribune and Gene Seymour and Jan Stuart from New York Newsday, and the New York Daily News said farewell to Jami Bernard and Jack Mathews.

Among the alternative weeklies, Jonathan Rosenbaum left the Chicago Reader. And the Village Voice chain is abandoning local critics in favor of syndicating their stars on the two coasts, L.A. Weekly’s 29-year-old Scott Foundas (who occasionally reviews for Variety) and the Village Voice’s senior critic J. Hoberman; the chain let go younger Village Voice critics Dennis Lim and most recently, Nathan Lee. [Variety]

All that’s left, really, is critic aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. And without Peter Travers’ kin, who’s going to stuff their ballot box?