Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig pni.com. NS
Answer
pni.com. 4 NS dns2.p08.nsone.net.
pni.com. 4 NS ns01.gannett-dns.com.
pni.com. 4 NS ns02.gannett-dns.com.
pni.com. 4 NS ns03.gannett-dns.com.
pni.com. 4 NS dns3.p08.nsone.net.
pni.com. 4 NS dns1.p08.nsone.net.
pni.com. 4 NS ns04.gannett-dns.com.
pni.com. 4 NS dns4.p08.nsone.net.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns01.gannett-dns.com. 4 A 45.54.66.1
ns02.gannett-dns.com. 4 A 45.54.66.65
ns03.gannett-dns.com. 4 A 45.54.66.129
ns04.gannett-dns.com. 4 A 45.54.66.193
ns01.gannett-dns.com. 4 AAAA 2607:f740:e627:0:0:0:0:1
ns02.gannett-dns.com. 4 AAAA 2607:f740:e627:4:0:0:0:1
ns03.gannett-dns.com. 4 AAAA 2607:f740:e627:8:0:0:0:1
ns04.gannett-dns.com. 4 AAAA 2607:f740:e627:c:0:0:0:1
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0