Html tables are not all comparable to newspaper columns. Newspaper-style columns (where text flows from the from bottom of one column to the top of the next column) can be achieved with the "columns" property in CSS.
But newspaper-style columns are not as useful on the web, since it is really annoying if the columns are longer then the screen and you have to scroll up and down. In that respect the web is very different than newspaper layouts where the dimensions are fixed.
As for <grid>, layout should be specified in CSS rather than through the html element, which is why we have "display: table", "display: grid" etc. in CSS, which should do what you want.
But newspaper-style columns are not as useful on the web, since it is really annoying if the columns are longer then the screen and you have to scroll up and down. In that respect the web is very different than newspaper layouts where the dimensions are fixed.
As for <grid>, layout should be specified in CSS rather than through the html element, which is why we have "display: table", "display: grid" etc. in CSS, which should do what you want.