Embracing Different Perspectives, on Campus, and in Journalism

By Jacob Himelfarb ’26
Ben Terris ’04 is a political journalist for The Washington Post and the author of The Big Break: The Gamblers, Party Animals, and True Believers Trying to Win in Washington While America Loses Its Mind. He is also a Concord Academy alum and a former writer for The Scallion—CA’s humor newspaper—and the sports section of The Centipede. Terris went to college at Brandeis University and got his start in political journalism by writing a blog about a cross-country road trip, in which he interviewed people about how young people talk about politics.
I am a current junior at CA and I interviewed Terris. Our conversation ranged from Terris’s CA experience, and what he learned from it, to his career in journalism and the current state of journalism in the United States. Throughout our discussions, one point came up again and again: the need for different perspectives.
When I asked Terris about what he thought about political discourse at CA, he offered some perspective on the privilege we have as CA students. “Concord Academy is, if nothing else, a place where people are experimenting and learning and pushing the envelope and having tough conversations and don’t always get it right, for sure,” he said. “But it’s a place where people are at least safe to discuss things.”
I can relate to what Terris is saying when he says CA is a “safe place to discuss things” because some of the most educational conversations I have ever had have come from healthy disagreements with peers and adults. One of the things that I think makes CA so special is that students say what they think and feel comfortable sharing different perspectives.
Later, Terris shared some insight on how “embracing different perspectives” makes him better at his job as a political journalist for The Washington Post, saying, “Listening is the most important part of journalism … I do make a very strong effort to listen to as many people as I can. Both sources. I’m talking to subjects, I’m talking to friends, colleagues. I’m just trying to weigh a lot in my head because nobody has the answer.”
He made it clear that the value of different perspectives does not just come in the form of knowledge and education, it also makes people more open. Giving someone a fair shot to be heard also makes someone more willing to hear out other perspectives, as they appreciate that their viewpoint is valued.
Terris also shared that his position, as someone who did not grow up wanting to be a political journalist, helps him to see things uniquely: “Seeing things with fresh eyes, seeing things as an outsider, I think it allows me to cover politics in a way that not everybody else does.” He added that avoiding viewpoints that treat issues as monoliths can only improve one’s journalism and discourse.
We concluded by talking about the state of journalism today, which Terris mentioned is worrisome to him. His trepidation comes from the lack of journalism and local news coverage in multiple states and cities. Terris believes that journalism is necessary to hold people in power accountable, and the lack of journalistic resources has him especially concerned on the local level—for example, town mayors. He noted, “You have mayors who can be as corrupt as they want because nobody’s covering them.”
CA is an even smaller community, but the need for journalism and accountability is ever-present. At CA, trusting each other is at the core of our ideals. We have different opinions, but we must honor and celebrate these differences so our worldviews can grow and evolve. In addition, we must trust that the inverse will hold: that people will embrace and learn from our perspectives. As Terris mentioned, these concepts are at the heart of journalism. If we want to be a community that continues to act from our ideal of common trust, we must hold each other accountable, and that starts at the smallest level: in our relationships with our peers and CA adults.