Bob Woodward had Deep Throat, the source that met him in a parking garage with top-secret information that would topple a president. Seth Wickersham had “staffers,” employees of the New England Patriots who met him everywhere from coffee shops to cars in the parking lot outside Gillette Stadium. The consequences of Wickersham’s report haven’t toppled any world leaders, yet, but both reporters were working to break similar codes of silence.
Wickersham, a senior writer at ESPN the Magazine who wrote the blistering story detailing a power struggle in Foxborough, learned the trade firsthand from the Washington Post luminary.