有關「工作倦怠」的研究，最早在1974年由紐約臨床心理學家Freudenberger 提出。在過去文獻中所述及之工作倦怠現象，大部分屬於心理學研究領域，探討了倦怠的意義、性質、成因、症狀與影響結果，並藉由分析工作倦怠的形成過程及造成因素，進而提出預防及克服倦怠的處理方法。早期工作倦怠的研究對象多半針對「助人工作」領域，如諮商輔導員、社會工作者等，隨後始加入其它專業領域，如教師、圖書館員及其它經常接觸他人的不同職業。本研究所關心的問題則是，新聞從業人員是否如同其它職業領域亦面臨工作倦怠的困擾。 本研究採取Maslach 的看法，從情緒耗盡、缺乏人性、個人成就感低落三個面向探討並定義工作倦怠為：「新聞工作者個人在與環境互動及因應過程中，未能有效處理工作壓力，因過度負荷而顯現出情緒耗竭、缺乏人性、低個人成就感的心理狀態」。在個人層面，本研究使用之人口背景變項包括性別、年齡、教育程度、教育背景、婚姻狀況、新聞工作年資等。在新聞工作特性與組織環境因素層面，本研究探討工作壓力來源因素，包括新聞工作特性、工作條件、人際關係、組織結構與氣氛、報業環境變遷等變項，以瞭解新聞記者工作倦怠現象與新聞行業及新聞組織相關的因素。 本研究發現，本地新聞從業人員工作倦怠情況並不嚴重，工作倦怠的程度僅介於「有時如此」與「甚少如此」之間。整體而言，個人人口背景變項均與新聞從業人員工作倦怠程度無顯著相關。但年齡較輕、年資較淺、未婚的新聞從業人員個人成就感有較為低落的傾向。 而在工作倦怠與及其它變項相關程度方面，研究發現工作壓力感受愈強烈者，其工作倦怠的感受亦愈強烈；新聞工作特性、工作條件、組織結構與氣氛、人際關係等方面感受較為強烈者，倦怠感亦較強烈。另外，工作倦怠感受愈強烈者，其專業承諾、大眾服務、工作承諾感受愈弱。

　　　　　Studies of job burnout have been popular in recent years, most appearing in the fields involved with “people work” such as social work, education, library science, to name just a few. But whether or not the newspaper professionals perceive the similar burnout in work has not been explored frequently yet. The purpose of this study is then to examine how strong the news reporters feel about job burnout, and what some factors are relating to their burnout, if any, including personal, organizational, and contextual attributes. Finally, this study asks how the relationship is between job burnout and news professionals’ commitment or whether the more burnout a journalist perceives, the more possible that he/she tries to change the job or even career. By using the questionnaires developed after reviewing the literature, a total of 92 question items were designed, in which the Likert-type five-point scale was adopted to measure the subjects’ perception about job burnout. These questionnaires were then distributed to the 300 beat reporters currently working at several different newspapers in Taiwan, and 180 were returned with a successful rate of 60%. The results show that the mean of job burnout was 2.473, generally located between “sometimes so” and “somewhat so”, meaning that most respondents feel a mild burnout condition in their daily job. But the data also indicated that reporters who are young, unmarried, and junior in the career ladder, are more possible to report the suffering of the syndrome. As to the attributing factors, this study found that job burnout has high and positive correlation with job stress. The result also confirms that the stronger a person perceives burnout, the less commitment he will carry out to the profession. Overall, the study does not confirm that news reporters in Taiwan were bothered by job burnout, but this less-than-obvious result might be caused by the design of this research where most subjects were surveyed in a time of not experiencing any heavy stress. The study then suggests future research to pay attention to the pressure of deadline in news people’s daily assignments.