An Uneasy Marriage of the Cultish and the Rumpled.

When Bloomberg L.P. bought Businessweek in December, a group of the magazine's writers, who were being transferred to the Bloomberg newswire, attended a two-week training session. They learned that the terminals, costing about $20,000 a year, drove Bloomberg's business; they discovered that the main elevators stop only on the sixth and ninth floors, forcing a manic feeling in the building as employees dash up and down staircases. One speaker was the head of Bloomberg's ''speed desk,'' who was especially proud, according to people at the meeting, when the desk published a headline seconds ahead of Reuters, and a young trader had made enough money from that lead alone to buy a Hummer. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]