Wilbur Fisk Storey (December 19, 1819 – October 27, 1884) was an American journalist and newspaper publisher who was instrumental in the growth of the Detroit Free Press and the Chicago Times. During the American Civil War, Storey pursued a "Copperhead" political line of vehement opposition to Abraham Lincoln and the Union war effort.

Wilbur Fisk Storey was born December 19, 1819, in Salisbury, Vermont. He spent his childhood years on his father's farm, attending local common-schools during the winter months.

The family subsequently moved to Middlebury, Vermont, where Storey was apprenticed to a printer at the age of 12. He worked in the office of the Middlebury True Press until the age of 17, when he gathered his meager savings and relocated to New York City to work as a compositor for the Journal of Commerce.

In 1838, Storey moved West to La Porte, Indiana to launch a newspaper of his own, a Democratic paper edited by future United States Senator Edward A. Hannegan. The publishing venture never attained profitability, however, and Storey went into commerce as the proprietor of a local drug store.

Growing tired of Indiana, Storey moved next to Jackson, Michigan, where he studied law for two years. He established there the Jackson Patriot, another paper lending its allegiance to the Democratic Party. He was appointed postmaster for Jackson under James K. Polk's administration as a reward for his support, whereupon he sold the paper. In 1849, new Whig President Zachary Taylor exercised his power of political patronage and removed the Democrat Storey from the postmaster position. Out of work, Storey launched another drug store. He was chosen the year following a member of the Michigan constitutional convention, and was subsequently appointed state prison inspector.

In 1853 he moved to Detroit, where he obtained a minority ownership share in the struggling Free Press. He subsequently bought out his partners, first purchasing a 50% stake in the publication before becoming sole owner and publisher. Over the next eight years the paper grew in size and influence, becoming one of the largest Democratic papers in the West and enabling Storey to accumulate a financial nest-egg of $30,000.

He went to Chicago in 1861 and purchased the Times, which then had a very small circulation. He redid the typography, sensationalized the presentation, and added local news. His energy, enterprise, and fearless expression of his views on every subject gave the paper notoriety. He was independent in an extreme way, boasting that he had no friends and wanted none, and apparently doing his utmost to create enemies. His whole mind was bent on giving the news, though his idea of what constituted news frequently struck some as morbid and indecorous. His efforts yielded him a large fortune.

Storey had supported Stephen A. Douglas in the 1860 presidential election. While opposing secession, the Times became a vehement critic of Abraham Lincoln after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. General Ambrose Burnside shut it down in 1863 for two days, but loyalists complained about the suppression of freedom of the press, and Lincoln quickly lifted the ban on the paper's publication. The paper's plant was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, but after publishing out of improvised facilities for two years, it began publishing from a new facility in 1873. It established a London bureau in 1877 to get news on the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878.