Norville is the anchor of Inside Edition, a syndicated television news magazine, a position she has held since March 6, 1995.

The 60-mile commute between school in Athens and work in Atlanta was grueling, as remembered by Norville in an interview with Larry B. Dendy for the Georgia Alumni Record (February 1990): "I'd leave the university on Friday afternoon and drive to Atlanta, and sometimes I had a place to stay and sometimes I slept in my car in the parking lot.

[5] Norville joined WAGA-TV as a full-time reporter after graduating and was named weekend anchor in October 1979.

A brief glimpse of Norville on a billboard, during her time at WMAQ-TV can be seen in the background in the 1986 film Running Scared[15] starring Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal.

During her tenure on Today, she won an Emmy award for her role in NBC's coverage of the democratic uprising in Romania.

In May 1991, ABC TalkRadio Networks announced Deborah Norville would be hosting a prime-time program, broadcast from her homes in New York and Long Island.

It ran from September 1991 to October 1992, when Norville joined CBS News to resume her television career.

[22] She reported for Street Stories and 48 Hours,[23] for which she won her second Emmy award for coverage of the Mississippi floods of 1994.

In March 2015, the show celebrated her 20th anniversary on the program, noting that she had become the longest-serving female anchor on national television.

[25] Among Norville's reports were her dispatches from the Davidson County, North Carolina, jail, billed as the "toughest in America"; her interview with Paula Jones, whose accusation of sexual harassment by then-president Bill Clinton led to the Monica Lewinsky scandal and impeachment proceedings, and her series of "jobs," notably the song she wrote and performed, "Keep On Movin."

Set to music written by noted producer Junior Vasquez, Norville wrote the lyrics, a challenge she described in O, The Oprah Magazine.

[27] She left Deborah Norville Tonight in 2005, citing the challenge of juggling her Inside Edition and MSNBC duties along with family responsibilities.

In 2015, Knit and Crochet Now!, a craft show seen on public television, announced the appointment of Norville as host of its upcoming season.

This was preceded by Back on Track: How To Straighten Out Your Life When It Throws You a Curve (Simon and Schuster, 1997), which drew on her earlier experiences on the Today Show.

[37] She left the board in December 2019 when Viacom merged with CBS Corporation, the producer and distributor of Inside Edition, to form Paramount Global.