Bronte Wittpenn, Susie Nelson, Sara DiNatale and Megan Munce react to winning the Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting for their for their series “Burned,” which showed how insurance companies using algorithmic tools have failed Californians who lost their homes to fire, while in the San Francisco Chronicle newsroom in San Francisco, California Monday, May 4, 2026.
Jessica Christian/S.F. Chronicle
Maggie Neilson inspects the remains of her neighbors home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles in February 2025.
Brontë Wittpenn/The Chronicle
Elsy Jimenez, left, and husband Lionel with a photo of their son, Raymond, at what would have been his graduation ceremony at Oxnard High School in June 2024.
Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle
The San Francisco Chronicle won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism on Monday for its investigation into how major home insurance companies leave California homeowners unable to rebuild after catastrophic wildfires, even when they have what they thought was full coverage.
“Burned,” written by reporters Megan Fan Munce, Susie Neilson and Sara DiNatale with the support of more than a dozen colleagues, examined previously unreported practices by the insurance industry, finding that major companies use faulty algorithms and hidden cost-cutting schemes to drastically underpay survivors, threatening the recovery and health of whole communities.
For the third time in five years, Pulitzer judges named Chronicle photographer Gabrielle Lurie a finalist in feature photography. This year, Lurie was honored for a portfolio of work about the devastating toll of drug addiction in San Francisco.
After using fentanyl, Austin Draper lies on the bed in his apartment on the edge of San Francisco’s SoMa. He has suffered from recurring endocarditis, a heart infection caused by his injection drug use.
Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle
Reporters Cynthia Dizikes and Joaquin Palomino were also finalists. They were among the final three stories in the investigative category for “Failed to Death,” a four-part series exposing California’s growing reliance on for-profit psychiatric hospitals and the grave consequences for people treated inside them.
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Jázmin Pellegrini’s younger sisters and cousin hold candles at a memorial for Jázmin in San Francisco’s Oceanview neighborhood shortly after her death.
Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle
With this year’s results, the Chronicle has had eight Pulitzer finalists in the past five years, by far the most in the history of the publication. The win is the Chronicle’s first Pulitzer award since 2005, when photographer Deanne Fitzmaurice won for her portrayal of an Iraqi boy recovering at an Oakland hospital after a debilitating explosion. Last year, the Chronicle was a finalist for two investigations into different aspects of policing.
“We share this honor with our subscribers whose financial support of high-level journalism allows us to do this ambitious, important and very difficult work,” said Chronicle editor Emilio Garcia-Ruiz. “Our goal is to be the best regional newsroom in the world, and we are grateful that these results are validating our efforts.”
Roger Cohn looks for items amid the ruins of his girlfriend Lisa Anderson’s home, destroyed by the Palisades Fire, in January 2025.
Stephen Lam/The Chronicle
Reporters Munce and Neilson started by examining a little-known government database of investigations into insurance providers. They found that most insurers were generating replacement costs for homes using an algorithm called 360Value that routinely underestimated the cost to rebuild, often by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Agents using the tool were encouraged to work quickly, without verifying data that might have resulted in more accurate estimates. Though regulators and insurers were aware of the issues, providers continued to use 360Value without alerting homeowners to the risk.
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As the reporters became experts in the shrouded world of insurance policies, the Eaton and Palisades fires ignited in Los Angeles County, leveling thousands of homes, causing an estimated $40 billion in losses and leaving many properties still standing polluted with particles of toxic metals and covered in layers of ash and soot.
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Visual journalists Brontë Wittpenn and Stephen Lam were dispatched to Los Angeles while the fires raged. Wittpenn’s short documentary explored the effects of underinsurance through California homeowners who have lived it, including Maggie Neilson, who lost her home in the Palisades Fire, and Jennifer McKim-Hibbard and Linda and Richard Salazar, whose Grizzly Flats homes were destroyed in 2021 in the Caldor Fire.
Wearing protective gear, Debbie McMahon walked in her living room still decorated with Christmas decoration in Altadena (Los Angeles County) in September 2025.
Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle
Lam photographed residents whose homes burned in the Palisades Fire, then returned to document homeowners coping with houses that survived the Eaton Fire but were left contaminated with toxic substances. One of those was Debbie McMahon, whose Christmas tree was still standing in her Altadena living room nine months after the Eaton Fire. McMahon is among the many displaced Los Angeles County residents fighting with their insurance companies over smoke damage.
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As Los Angeles families confronted the aftermath of the blazes, Munce and Neilson revealed additional tactics that insurers across the U.S. use to deny or undercut claims for every kind of disaster. The reporters pored over hundreds of records to show that homeowners who’ve been paying insurance premiums for years, often find themselves fighting providers who use friendly contractors and hidden rules to limit their coverage and slash payouts.
When the California Department of Insurance assembled a task force to establish guidelines for new laws addressing smoke contamination, Munce and Neilson, joined by DiNatale, were the first to reveal conflicts of interest among the committee members.
“The reporters exposed the home insurance industry’s inner workings from stem to stern, an enormously difficult feat,” Chronicle investigative editor Ryan Gabrielson said. “Their series is a tour de force.”
Photographer Lurie earned her third finalist honor — an extraordinary record for one of photojournalism’s most prestigious awards — for a portfolio centered on fentanyl addiction in San Francisco. Through vivid, intimate images, Lurie showed how people struggle against — and occasionally overcome — the powerful opioid.
Lurie documented 35-year-old Austin Draper, who has battled addiction for a decade. Draper has suffered recurrent heart infections tied to injecting drugs and had three open-heart surgeries to treat the condition, but after each recovery still returns to fentanyl. Lurie’s portfolio this year also included photographs of the family of Jazmin Pellegrini, a 15-year-old found dead in a San Francisco driveway with drugs in her system after enduring repeated psychiatric hospitalizations; and Evan Carver, who found hope and new life in a rehab center after years of homelessness and addiction.
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Evan Carver walks through the Tenderloin with bags of wound care supplies for his leg after a doctor’s appointment in San Francisco.
Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle
“Gabrielle has documented all aspects of the fentanyl epidemic since 2019. In that time, she has built trust with individuals and families dealing with the heartbreaking impact of addiction,” said Nicole Frugé, the Chronicle’s director of visuals. “Together these images are a compassionate portrait of a community living alongside fentanyl — grieving those it has lost, carrying those still struggling and cautiously supporting those trying to recover.
“Lurie is arguably the nation’s preeminent photographer covering the drug crisis,” Frugé added. “She sets the standard for photojournalism that is practiced with great care and empathy. Her work is singular in its combination of rarely seen intimacy and unflinching honesty.”
A worker at a funeral home in Concord shows the urn containing Jázmin’s remains.
Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle
For “Failed to Death,” Dizikes and Palomino spent more than a year examining for-profit psychiatric hospitals in California, where tens of thousands of people are treated for serious mental health crises including depression and psychosis. Drawing on state reports, county citations, 911 calls and medical records, the reporters created a first-of-its-kind dataset that revealed widespread abuse, neglect and violence occurring inside these institutions’ locked wards, including hundreds of physical and sexual assaults and at least 18 deaths related to poor care between 2019 and 2024.
Dizikes and Palomino also examined the finances behind for-profit psychiatric hospitals. Using an obscure hospital finance dataset, they developed a novel analysis that showed the companies running these facilities have generated huge profits while cutting corners on staffing and delivering deficient patient care.
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Joaquin Palomino and Cynthia Dizikes react to being finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting for their for their series “Burned,” which showed how insurance companies using algorithmic tools have failed Californians who lost their homes to fire, while in the San Francisco Chronicle newsroom in San Francisco, California Monday, May 4, 2026.
Jessica Christian/S.F. Chronicle
The hospital operators have been able to understaff their units, the investigation found, because a state law mandating minimum nurse-to-patient ratios was never implemented for psychiatric hospitals.
The Washington Post won the prize for public service for its reporting on the Trump administration’s wide-ranging, choppy cuts and changes to federal agencies, and the Associated Press won for international reporting. The Minnesota Star Tribune won the award for breaking news for its coverage of the mass shooting at a Catholic school in Minneapolis.
The Pulitzer Prize is widely considered the highest honor in journalism, with awards given annually for the best reporting, photography, commentary and criticism. In 2025, the Chronicle was named a finalist in national reporting for its look at the devastating and often deadly outcomes of high-speed police chases, and in local/state reporting for a collaboration with UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program that revealed the secret legal settlements that allow police officers with records of misconduct to find work at new law enforcement agencies.
The Chronicle was a finalist for investigative reporting in 2023 and for feature photography in 2022 and 2023. Cartoonist Mark Fiore won the Pulitzer for editorial cartooning in 2010 for his work appearing on SFGATE, which is owned by the Chronicle’s parent company.
Eaton Fire survivor Rossana Valverde stood by a backyard fence where she witnessed the initial hours of the Eaton Fire on a ridge above Eaton Canyon in Pasadena in June 2025.
Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle
“Burned” was a collaborative effort that called on colleagues and teams from across the Chronicle newsroom. The project was edited by Ryan Gabrielson, Kate Galbraith and Demian Bulwa; with additional visuals by Jessica Christian and Alisha Jucevic; and visuals editing by Nicole Frugé, Emily Jan and Maggie Beidelman. Sarah McGrew produced video and contributed additional reporting. Graphics and animation were by John Blanchard and Daymond Gascon, with maps by Todd Trumbull and Harsha Devulapalli, and design and development by Erin Caughey. Design and development editing was by Alex K. Fong. Nami Sumida provided data and visualizations, with data editing by Dan Kopf and copy editing by Linda Houser/Tafur. Jess Marmor Shaw, Elisabeth Smith and JJ Juarez contributed audience strategy.
“This is one of the greatest days in the history of the Chronicle, and we are proud to build on the work done by all of our finalists over the past five years and those Chronicle greats honored by the committee in the past, including Herb Caen in 1996,” Garcia-Ruiz said.
About the San Francisco Chronicle
The San Francisco Chronicle (www.sfchronicle.com) is the largest newspaper in Northern California and the second largest on the West Coast. Acquired by Hearst in 2000, the San Francisco Chronicle was founded in 1865 by Charles and Michael de Young and has been awarded six Pulitzer Prizes for journalistic excellence. Follow us on X at @SFChronicle