While digging through the LexisNexis CourtLink database — a repository that houses court cases and documents — investigative and data reporter Susie Neilson stumbled across the kind of information that gives a journalist pause. It’s also the kind of information that would lead to an investigation so comprehensive and consequential that it would earn the San Francisco Chronicle the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. A month or so earlier, she’d read an investigative story about Hurricane Helene survivors who had been underpaid by their insurance companies and left struggling to rebuild their lives. She thought that kind of thing might be happening to Californians, too, given the state’s track record with devastating wildfires. She walked over to the desk of insurance reporter Megan Fan Munce to ask. “She had within a day contacted some sources and unearthed this obscure database of investigations into California-based insurance companies,” Neilson said.…