Wicker began working in professional journalism in 1949, as editor of the small-town Sandhill Citizen in Aberdeen, North Carolina.
He eventually worked for other newspapers, including The Winston-Salem Journal and The Nashville Tennessean.
In an exit-interview Q & A with fellow Times reporter R. W. Apple, he reflected on one primary lesson of his years in the capital.
He wrote the essay on Richard Nixon for the book Character Above All: Ten Presidents from FDR to George Bush (1995).
[4] In a secret operation code-named "Project MINARET," the National Security Agency (NSA) monitored the communications of leading Americans, including Wicker and other prominent U.S. journalists, Senators Frank Church and Howard Baker, such civil rights leaders as Martin Luther King Jr., and prominent U.S. athletes who criticized the U.S. war in Vietnam.