Lea Ann Leming starts today as the Executive Producer of ABC News Digital. Leming joins from HLN Digital, where last year she oversaw the launch of HLNtv.com. Leming replaces Ed O’Keefe who left ABC News in June for the start-up Now This News.

A CNN veteran, Leming also helped create CNN.com. In fact, she wrote the first story for the site on Aug. 30, 1995 as NATO began a series of airstrikes against Bosnian Serb targets.

Leming will report to Joe Ruffolo, SVP of ABC News Digital.

Fox News, The Huffington Post, Current TV, Gawker, Turner Sports, CBS and CBS News, Microsoft, Granite Broadcasting, CNN.com and ABC News–twice.

These are just some of the major media companies that have partnered with Yahoo! over the last 15 years. Many of the agreements have been small ones, and some of them have been significant, but almost all have quietly ended. Some of the deals–like the one with Current TV–were dead before ever getting off the ground.

Today, ABC News and Yahoo! announced that they are partnering once more.

The first time ABC News and Yahoo! partnered on content–way back in 2000–the ambitions seemed very familiar (see quotes at the bottom of the story), and the two companies teamed up again in 2005, with a focus on video.

Joe Ruffolo, senior VP of digital for ABC News, tells TVNewser that the big difference with today’s agreement is in its scope.

“It is just a lot more, to be quite honest. We had a video relationship with them where we were giving them certain links, and live streams of breaking news events. We will obviously continue to do that,” Ruffolo says. “The real difference in this is we will be doing much more on a story-by-story basis with them.

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ABC News said the hour between 11 p.m. ET and midnight Sunday, when news broke of the death of Osama Bin Laden, was its largest hour ever in terms of traffic, including its website, wireless site, and apps for the iPad, iPhone, and other smartphones.

The network added that Monday was the highest-trafficked day in the history of ABCNews.com, with a big push coming from its exclusive video from inside Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound, which totaled more than 1 million views.

ABC News Digital senior vice president Joe Ruffolo said:

It has been an incredible day for ABC News, showing the enormous power of our newsgathering operations and our ability to translate and deliver that experience on-air, online, on phones, and wherever our users are. ABCNews.com was once again a leading destination in digital news, offering our users exclusive content, an enormous breadth and depth of reporting, and compelling video experiences.

Four months into the top job at ABC News Ben Sherwood is building his executive team, and he’s tapped two former colleagues for leadership roles.

As we’ve been reporting, and is now official, Barbara Fedida is making a return to ABC News as SVP of talent and business. Fedida was talent VP at CBS News until February, departing amid an executive shuffle there. Fedida joined CBS News from ABC News in 2006, where she’d spent the previous 17 years, rising from production associate to producer to talent recruitment and development director.

Susan Mercandetti is also returning to ABC, after a run as executive editor at Random House. Mercandetti spent more than a decade at ABC News on “Good Morning America” and “Nightline.”

Sherwood is also bringing on Aol executive Joe Ruffolo as Senior VP of ABC News Digital. At Aol, Ruffolo was VP of AOL.com and Head of Current Programming. Ruffolo replaces Paul Slavin who, after 33 years with ABC News, left the company last week.

Fedida takes over for Amy Entelis who is leaving ABC News for Sucherman Consulting where she will be EVP of talent.

Fedida and Ruffolo start tomorrow. Mercandetti joins May 2.

> Update: Sherwood’s letter to staff, after the jump.

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