We've been chuckling in our newsroom about recent articles about Rochester in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The two papers have been writing about the post-Kodak condition of our little town, and they've been painting a dramatically different picture of our little town.

The Times cheerfully notes that we've replaced many of the jobs we lost with Kodak's slide - and the Times has highlighted the proliferation of tech-type businesses. The Journal seems convinced that we're in the depth of misery.

Yesterday, the Journal was back at it again, this time portraying the Eastman House - one of the country's most important museums of photography - as "scrambling to preserve" its important holdings.

The article set off a small flurry of comments, and I have to admit that my first reaction was one of huffiness at its writer, arts critic Richard Woodward. I visit the Eastman House frequently, and I don't see any signs of it "struggling to keep up appearances," as Woodward writes.

In the photography museum part of the complex, that is.

There are parts of the house museum, especially upstairs, that are simply outdated. That said, if you'd never been to the Eastman House, you'd conclude from Woodward's article that the important stuff - the archives and the exhibition space - was stuffed inside of George Eastman's home. Woodward talks about sun-bleached curtains and mismatched furniture in offices.

That's in the house.

The archives and exhibitions, of course, are housed in the big, new, climate controlled building behind Eastman's house.

We're lucky to have that building. And we darned near lost the archives, when some short-sighted Eastman House board members thought Rochester wasn't worthy of them - wasn't big enough, rich enough, and important enough to be the home of such an important collection - and tried to ship the archives off to the Smithsonian.

Some people who knew better, and had more faith in both Rochester and the worldwide photography community, launched a campaign to keep the archives here.

The result is a facility worthy of the collection.

But before we get too small-town proud, and too shortsighted in our own way, those of us defending the honor of the Eastman House should take a deep breath. Read, for instance, one of the comments following the Journal article, posted by Rochester artist Bruno Chalifour, who cites some of GEH's less-than-stellar exhibitions.

As Chalifour notes, GEH and other museums - museums around the country - are sometimes compelled to do whatever they can to get people to come. We can carp all we like about GEH, MAG, and others not hosting enough challenging exhibitions, enough "real art." But something has to pay the bills, and provocative or seemingly less accessible art (and music) sometimes drives people away.

(The RPO's new music director, Arild Remmereit, is showing that "new" can be noteworthy and accessible - and that it can get rousing applause for it.)

I do want our museums to host stronger exhibitions - exhibitions more worthy of their institutions and of this city. A weak, crowds-friendly exhibition isn't the result of money shortages alone. The director, the staff, and the board play a bigger role. But I recognize that especially now, the arts are under considerable financial strain, here and pretty much everywhere. And in Rochester, Kodak's not the sole cause of that strain.

Rochester has proved in the past that it is a bigger city than its population numbers suggest - big enough to support and nurture arts of all kinds. If the Eastman House and others are "struggling" to be what they ought to be, we all bear some responsibility. And that responsibility includes not only donations but attendance. And participation. And pressure to aim higher.