Between the Lines

— LEFT, OUT Media gadfly and former CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg — whose attack on what he perceives as the leftward tilt of mainstream journalism made Bias a best-seller — has moved from Regnery to Warner for his next jeremiad, Arrogance. ”He’s looking at the pernicious liberal influence in media from a broader perspective,” says AOL Time Warner Book Group chairman, and self-confessed liberal, Laurence Kirshbaum, who paid close to seven figures for the book. ”As a publisher I feel an obligation to be as unbiased as I can be,” he adds. The book will include a list of the 10 most biased people in network television.

— TRIPLE PLAY Miramax Books must be expecting big things: The publisher has just signed Michael Chabon to write not one, but two sequels to Summerland, his baseball novel for kids that arrives in stores next month.

— WAIT PROBLEM For Potter fans, it’s a torture worthy of the dungeons of Azkaban. Two full years have passed since the release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and now there are rumblings that J.K. Rowling’s next book might not be out until well into 2003. ”With the first two books there was no pressure. By the third book there was a little pressure. And with the fourth book, she faced huge pressure. Right now, Jo is just taking the time to write the best book that she can,” says David Heyman, a producer on the Warner Bros. Potter films who is in regular contact with Rowling. ”My sense is that the book won’t come out until next fall.” Indeed, Scholastic Books chief exec Dick Robinson recently told Bloomberg News that the fifth installment, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, may not be published until the middle of next year. ”We don’t have it yet,” says a spokesperson for the imprint. ”But she’s writing happily, and once we have it, it will take about five months to get it out.” Sorry, Potter-ites: Your Dementors torture looks likely to continue for a while.