Borchard teaches classes in journalism history, reporting, and research methods. His publications include the books Lincoln Mediated: The President and the Press through Nineteenth-Century Media (Transaction 2015, Routledge 2020), Abraham Lincoln and Horace Greeley (Southern Illinois University Press 2011), and Journalism in the Civil War Era (Peter Lang 2010). His manuscripts appear in Journalism and Communication Monographs, Journalism History, American Journalism, and The Journal of Popular Culture. He edited the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Journalism (SAGE 2022), and he was the inaugural editor of Journalism History for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication's History Division. He was a reporter and columnist for newspapers, including the Gainesville Sun, Lakeshore Weekly, and the Minnesota Daily