[3] He joined Utah newspaper The Salt Lake Tribune in 1946 despite a lack of journalistic experience and rose to executive news editor.
With surfer Phil Edwards, Ottum wrote You Should Have Been Here an Hour Ago: The Stoked Side of Surfing or How to Hang Ten Through Life and Stay Happy (1967).
[4] In July 1968, and again a few months later, auto racer Mickey Thompson and his crew took three recently built 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1s to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah and broke a total of 295 FIA speed and endurance records.
Donald J. Barr, writing in Sports Illustrated in 1985, opined that "No SI writer has spoken with a more distinctive—or entertaining—voice over the past 21 years than Bob Ottum".
[4] Commenting on Ottum's 1968 Sports Illustrated article "Old Marshmallow Foot" about racing on the Salt Flats in Utah, Brian Lohnes—writing on BangShift.com in 2019—observed: "The humor, humility, and fun displayed here along with the legit reporting of events is something that goes into different realms than today's automotive journalism does.
(1972) in the University of Scranton publication Best Sellers: The Semi-Monthly Book Review, Charles J. Keffer wrote: "The entire enterprise is very ingeniously developed and written and would be well worth while as an evening's entertainment.
"[15] Kirkus Reviews concluded that "A lot of the very funny potential goes up in marsh gas, but then this alien world comes from the Time-Life building.