Why do mass updates to post_content shows in front end, but not in edit screen?

I found what was causing the problem in this case: we are using APC Cache and the WP APC Panel plugin for WordPress.

I fixed it with the following steps:

  1. go to WordPress->Tools->WP APC Panel
  2. click on the User Cache Entries tab
  3. then click Clear user cache

As soon as I did this, all the old “extended” content from Movable Type, that I had added through the MySQL command line, started showing up in the post edit screens.