There is _literally no chance_ that I am going to leave an existing job for a "week or two" contract with a company. If that's part of their hiring process, I will simply look elsewhere.
But if you're working someplace salaried, it seems fairly dishonest to spin up a short contract. especially when most of the attention is consumed in the process of getting started (environment, implicit policies, platform, etc).
plus on your side, you don't really know how much of that person you're getting. if the work is great, thats fine, but if it seems slow or misguided, is that a fundamental reflection of ability, or because they tried to cram it in between 8pm and 11pm every night?
Maybe that's a Silicon Valley thing?
People might have clauses to prevent people from working on similar work for competitors, sure, but I haven't seen anything that bars working on other kinds of projects outside of work.
Though as you say your a journalist they tend to be exceptions.