Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig hearstdigital.com. NS
Answer
hearstdigital.com. 5 NS ns-476.awsdns-59.com.
hearstdigital.com. 5 NS ns-1217.awsdns-24.org.
hearstdigital.com. 5 NS ns-563.awsdns-06.net.
hearstdigital.com. 5 NS ns-1701.awsdns-20.co.uk.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0