Let's look in on the state of the regular chess column. If you're new here, this is one of my regular cheerleader sections to find more and to get more chess out there. Daily doesn't exist (even here, ahem) since George Koltanowski passed in 2000 after over 19,000 columns starting in 1948.
One of the best out there is GM Lubomir Kavalek's in the Washington Post. The UK Telegraph Chess Club section is also good. I believe both require free registration. The Scotsman column by John Henderson has been made hard to find. Go here to the Games section and click Chess on the right. His name isn't on it for some reason, but he assures me it's still him.
Few newspaper columns contribute much in the way of new news if you are already reading sites like ChessBase and TWIC (the aforementioned are exceptions), but they usually have an analyzed game. Does your local paper have a chess column? If not, write the editors online AND with a letter. Make suggestions, talk about kids and the game, be personal. Get other chess friends to do the same. I'll send'em a column for free if they'll run it.
Post links to other good columns, or mention offline ones you like. There's a list here, but I'd rather hear the ones you like and why. Too many just phone it in.
One of the things that makes me really quite upset is the relatively poor chess columns that the papers I read do have. I don't need to see something in the funnies that comes out of "New In Chess", but it would be worth a few points to have the writers think more thematically rather than a series of one off articles so that players could engage a longer dialogue. I agree with you Mig that most of these columns are essentially "phoning it in", but that's only because, as you say, so few of us hold people accountable.
I was fond of the newspaper column of Ian Rogers: witty, authoritative, up-to-date, and well-informed. But it is a long time since I have been able to find it on line. It is even more successfully buried than my column in The Globe and Mail.
No, my local paper doesn't carry one, even though it claimed it did when I emailed them offering to write it. Remember of course The Times, which has a rich chess history and still has Ray Keene every day doing his stuff.