Flying Eye's co-founder Sam Arthur described Borten's work as "groundbreaking" and in line with the publisher's mission to rediscover and republish striking examples of vintage children's book art.
was praised in Kirkus Reviews for the way it "explores the relationship between the design elements of line, shape, and color and how they make readers feel.
She was quickly hired on as an assistant producer at WNYC, creating award-winning work for the station over the course of two years before losing her job during staff-wide layoffs.
[7] Between 1994 and 2004 Borten created a sprawling documentary series titled A Sense of Place, which covered a wide variety of topics over its three seasons and 43 parts.
The Times described Borten's approach to the series as "poking her tape recorder into odd and overlooked corners of the American landscape."
She made episodes on the lives of sideshow performers, agricultural workers, and Akwesasne Mohawk ironworkers, among many other subjects, and profiled larger-than-life figures like writer Tom McGuane, blues singer Diamond Teeth Mary, and composer Conlon Nancarrow.
[2][8][9] The series was edited by Borten herself, and was initially funded using $157,000 inches (400,000 cm) grant awards from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the National Endowment for the Arts.
[10] Helen Borten won a Peabody Award for her 1991 audio documentary The Case Against Women: Sexism in the Courts, produced for NPR's Horizons program while she was still on staff at WNYC.
[6][2] Another of Borten's NPR Horizons pieces, And Justice for All, a documentary about tenant evictions in New York City, received a duPont-Columbia Silver Baton in 1991.
In 2016, she told Publishers Weekly that she was working on a nonfiction book called Dark Victories: A Murder Case, the Terrorist Scare and Lies in the Name of Justice.