Yes, that last sentence was a bit harsh, but stay with me. Constantly saying "Hey guys, PR exists" except in code is one of those weird HN tics that drives me crazy. Allow me to elaborate.
1) The concept of public relations is not novel or unheard of. Like at all. PR companies have thousands of employees, are traded on public stock markets, and so on. It's an often sophisticated and well established professional discipline. I personally am aware of it because I spent 10 years as an executive at a PR firm, so I feel some ability to speak on the subject.
Pointing out that PR exists is like noticing there's a bright shining light in the sky half of the time, it's completely devoid of insight. Of course when companies are mentioned favorably in the press it's likely that PR was involved. That's literally intrinsic to the concept of companies being in the press. The details of how that works might be interesting, but...
2) Even within that context the linked article is facile at best. It's pretty long but it's clearly written by someone who doesn't really have all that much exposure to or understanding of how journalism or PR works on a day to day basis. Or didn't at the time at least. He's a great writer, I loved his book, and this works just fine as a personal anecdote, but not as a canonical comment for decades on dozens of business stories.
3) And lastly, literally nobody on the planet calls a pitched press profile story a "submarine" ever, like it's thirteen years later, it didn't catch on.
Stop trying to make submarine happen. It's not going to happen.
I'll show myself out.