Our Story

Originally known as the OptOut Media Foundation, the Accountability Journalism Institute was established in early 2020 by award-winning investigative reporter Alex Kotch and investigative reporter Walker Bragman to provide alternatives to legacy media reporting. Our main offering was the OptOut news aggregation app, developed by Progressive Coders Network and hand-curated by a team of journalists from a diverse ecosystem of independent publications throughout the country. The app made it into the Top 20 news apps on the Apple app store.

With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, it became clear that more investigative work was necessary in the sphere of public health to capture the full scope of the threats facing the country. We felt that OptOut’s mission of promoting a vibrant independent media ecosystem was best served by devoting resources to our own original reporting.

In 2025, we decided to phase out the OptOut app, focusing all of our resources instead into this void-filling investigative work. We relaunched as the Accountability Journalism Institute with an updated mission of restoring faith in America’s institutions. To that end, we expanded our board of directors to include not only dedicated journalists but renowned scientists, credible academics, and committed social justice advocates as well. We also recruited a team of qualified experts to serve on our Scientific Advisory Board focused on public health.